Snail hunter
Last summer I planted a vegetable garden.
After some months of preparation we were able to enjoy the fruits of it’s labor with beautiful tomatos, zucchini and a few others. We were thrilled with the loot. But the one thing we were not thrilled with was the snail situation. Every morning I would wake up to check on the garden only to be met with the sight of numerous snails starting to snack on my heirloom tomatoes and making their way to my squash.
My ritual was to take the snails off the plants and then chuck them up the hill, because in my mind that was better than killing them, all the while knowing they would just come back. I tried the beer in pie pan thing, and the putting old coffee filters around the plants, nothing natural that I was trying was working.
At some point Zoe must have started to pick up my distaste for the snails because she started to be on the lookout. I would hear a very specific bark from her and when I would go to investigate the cause it was always a snail. So we came up with a battle plan, I would hold the snail for her to smell and then chuck it to a hill where there is only lots of dirt, and she with complete excitement would bolt running after it to research the landing. Success! Our plan started to work!
I am known to say that Zoe is everything I wanted in a dog but nothing I knew I needed, and this is just another example of how this is so the case. Who would have thought that a dog would snail hunt? I didn’t see that box to check when adopting her, yet here she is, her innate self hunting the snails.
Zoe is now consistently on the lookout for snails, making sure they do not get into our garden, and if they do, we have an action plan in place and Zoe is ON IT!
My name is Jordan, and my dog is a snail hunter.
