I believe strongly in supervising and training your dogs. That should be simpler for you since your dogs will spend much of their time indoors. You should be able to keep an eye on them, especially until you get a few rules across.

My dogs are trained to stay out of the flower and vegetable gardens and they actually do, with very, very rare infractions. They will even stop and look distressed at the edge of a bed when a toy is accidently tossed in there during a game of catch (GOOD DOGGIES!!). They won't even run into the vegetable garden to chase rabbits (not QUITE so good but at least they know the rule). But it wasn't always that way. My younger dog was more prone to eat bad things when she was a pup than any dog I've ever seen. And she almost died after eating mushrooms out in the woods. It took some time and effort to get the idea through to her that she doesn't need to chew EVERYTHING that she finds.

So many plants are toxic at least to some extent that I really think it is more effective to teach the dog rather than to ban all poisonous plants. However, I don't grow foxglove (sigh), because dh is worried about that one. And I've stayed away from datura and castor bean because they make me nervous. But then, my dogs are strictly outdoor dogs and are not closely surpervised inside the 2-3 acre fenced area around our house. I'm away from home for about ten and a half hours a day at work - I'd stay home with them if I could! Since I can't, I try to find a middle way between bare flower beds and well behaved pets.

Linda is right, training is the key. My dog, god love her, is dumb but she know the boundaries of the beds. Also, dogs being carnivores by nature, don't generally graze on many plants and they seem to know which plants to leave alone.

My dog loves tomatoes and strawberries and will eat them off the plant but she has never taken a nibble at the leaves. I don't think she would have ever snatched toms off the plant if I hadn't taught her to eat them. lol (Like I said she is kind of dumb and believes if "Mommy" gives her something, it must be good.)

The list of plants that is toxic to dogs is longer than the list that isn't. I've had all of the things you mentioned in my yard and my dog has never paid the slightest attention to them. The only caution I have is when I am pulling toxic plants out. Keep away is a favorite game of hers. If I am making a pile of pulled plants and Katie wants to play, she will run up and snatch a plant and run away so I will chase her. I make sure I'm not making piles of anything while she's out. If you get to know your dog, train them to behave, and keep an eye on them while they're puppies you will be just fine.

I trained my dog with a small water gun I used to hide in my pocket. It works fast and is a great way to show your displeasure at a pet. The learn real quick with the water gun.

In the link below scroll down to the dog's head and you'll find some good links about gardening with dogs. If you click on the dog head you get dog biscuit recipes ;-)

Here is a link that might be useful: Improving your soil (well--you'll see why there are dog links there)

Hi,
My dogs are like many children. They stay out of the beds when you are around, but left unsupervised, they get into things, lol. I had a dog that loved tomatoes so much, he would leap over the rabbit fence to eat them. I had to install a bigger fence. It turned into a nice picket with a gated arbor so it was a good thing in the end : )
As far as poisonous plants are concerned, I grow lots of them, my dogs have never touched them. If you get close and take a wiff of many poisonous plants like Datura they smell horrid. I could see a problem with an over rambunctious puppy taking a chomp of something though.
Trudi's water gun suggestion does work as a training tool. My new dog would have excessive barking episodes. The water stopped that.
Remy

I train mine to stay out of the beds with visual cues...I use stakes.

If they see a stake, they know they aren't supposed to go in there. They catch on to this fairly quickly...but then I have mostly herding breeds (not the "nose to the ground" type).

Everything everybody has said so far. I will add that you are getting high energy dogs, and such dogs are best kept out of trouble with a couple of good long walks every day. Keep their lives active and they won't get bored and start looking at your plants to relieve the boredom.

I have two dogs and in my gardens are lots of Aconitums, Foxgloves (a favourite), and of course, the Lupines are wild here. The dogs do like to chew on blades of grass, so you will find pockets on the property where the grass is left to grow for them. They have their spots, so it's nice.

They also won't go into the gardens and destroy things or eat plants. Sometimes I see them walking through the gardens, but it's because the squirrel or deers have gone through during the night. Raven and Chewy seem to know where to walk... I guess it just came from being out there with them quite a bit. They also know what "OUT OF THE GARDEN!!!" means and respond very quickly. :O)

Well, my dog is dumb. Okay? Plus I have a cat that I try very hard to keep inside, but he really wants to be outside and he likes to eat plants. I have not been entirely successful in avoiding poisonous plants, but I try. That being said, I found this list - if you go to the bottom of the "safe" plant list, you can click on the poisonous plant list. I am sure there are plants that are not included, but it is a start.

http://www.plantsciences.ucdavis.edu/ce/king/PoisPlant/SAFE-COM.htm

Becky

Thanks for your thoughts everyone.

I'll keep a real close eye on them at first and let them know what the rules are right away. If I still notice they're drawn to certain plants, I'll move them at that time. They're 4 1/2 months, so while still small, they're not teeny tiny puppies, so hopefully they'll have a little more sense, lol.

We're planning on exercising them well by taking them on walks and playing with them in the yard. A few people have told us beagles are great to have in pairs, because they'll use energy playing together. Others have told us we're crazy, lol. I guess we'll find out which pretty soon.

Good luck with the dogs. My dog decided that the water gun was a great way to get a drink of water (she would catch the stream in her mouth) so that didn't work very well for training. I have foxglove and monkshood and we've kept an eye on the dogs but they've never shown the slightest interest. One of my dogs did try to eat some of the coco mulch when we put that down, but stopped when we told her. We don't use coco mulch in the backyard now as I didn't want to have to worry about it.

I have a terrier and a dachshund so they aren't trainable to keep out of the garden areas. They love to run through the mulch and look for rodents. I worked around it by keeping a very thick layer of cedar mulch around my roses. The mulch is of the type that sticks together a bit so it doesn't scatter when they run. I learned this spring that I can't plant seedlings back there since they get covered in mulch and torn up when the dogs run through. I'm letting my seedlings grow up in safety in pots on the porch now and I'll plant them out when they are big enough to hold their own.

Be sure not to use blood meal. My dog dug up my raspberry patch trying to find out where the blood was coming from. Otherwise the dogs have never shown any interest in any of my fruit (raspberries, cherry, peach). I don't grow any veggies.

That's right about the blood meal. Even my dogs will go after that stuff. Fish emulsion is almost as bad.

Mo_girl - make sure you have a hose long enough to reach the garden. If your dogs head toward the garden beds, yell, "Hey (dog's name)! I'm gonna sprinkle you with the hose if you don't git outta there!"

And then, when they commence gallumping through the beds anyway, wet them down. And follow them with it until they're at a safe distance from the beds. This worked for my dog, a yellow Lab and also a housedog. She loves water but she hates being surprised by the dreaded "Mr. Hose".

Years ago I got her one of those blue, hard-plastic wading pools (they last several seasons) and when she had that to play in her interest in the garden dropped significantly. She'll spend the better part of the afternoon running around a bit, then coming back to sit in her "swimmin' pool". Over and over. This has kept her entertained for 12 years!

Like others have said, she's never touched any plants she shouldn't and, although she's a big veggie lover, she's never (knock on wood) "picked her own". She loves to go over and smell the tomatoes, cukes, and peppers every time she goes outside, but I guess she prefers hers to be cut up in nice, bite-size pieces. I've never been able to figure this one out, but I'm grateful for it, in any case!

I guess that makes sense about the blood meal, especially with Beagles great sense of smell, I definitely need to remember to stay away from that.

I do have a long hose, so that would work. Will the hose work with the German Shepherd next door? Lol. He still is not used to me. I am on that side of the yard watering or checking my plants almost everyday, and it never fails that he sneaks up on me and barks as loud as he can ... occasionally jumps up against the fence. He makes me jump almost every time, even though I should know he's coming. He doesn't stop until I leave that half of the yard. The neighbors probably wouldn't appreciate the hose thing, but I'm tempted :) I wonder if the German Shepherd will bark the whole time our new dogs are outside, as he hasn't seemed to get used to the people in our family yet. Hopefully he likes dogs better.

Mo_girl, making you jump is probably the high point of his day! (It is pretty funny)

When we got our dogs, I talked to our vet about poisonous plants and he said he'd never seen a dog eat a poisonous plant as long as he'd been a vet. I'm sure it could happen but probably rare. They must have good instinct. Still, since they're puppies, I would move out anything that would be poisonous in small amounts just in case.
Are you worried about them digging in your garden? When we chose our dogs, I was careful to try to pick a breed that wasn't prone to digging. We got a couple of little Sheltie puppies and they dug many holes in my backyard. lol They don't now since they're older. They like laying in the shade. I had to landscape around their favorite spot under my dogwood tree and I don't try to plant anything where they've made a path around the perimeter of our fenced backyard.
Beagles DO make good pets. All dogs are more trouble when they're puppies so hang in there.

After reading some more, there are so many types of poisonous plants it would be hard to get rid of all of them. I wish I knew which ones were the worst and most potent. From what I've read, some plants cause an upset stomach and some can cause death, but they don't list which is which. I can probably ask the vet about this when we take them in.

I'm sure it will take patience on my part, but in the end, it will be worth it. Maybe I can post some pictures once we pick them up ... hopefully this week. We're still working on the fence.