West Michigan's Morning News
Dogscaping - A Gardening Simplified Preview
An official message from Medicare. A new law is helping me save more money on prescription drug costs. Maybe you can save too. With Medicare's Extra Help program, my premium is zero, and my out-of-pocket costs are low. Who should apply? Single people making less than $23,000 a year, or married couples who make less than $31,000 a year. Even if you don't think you qualify, it pays to find out. Go to ssa.gov/extrahelp. Paid for by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. I had to start with it. This is West Michigan's Morning News. Steve Kelly, Brett Makita, Lauren Smith from Gardening. Simplified all ladies and gentlemen, Rick Weist on the live line. Good morning, Rick. Hey, good morning. Raise the woof, man. Two very popular things, gardening and taking care of your dog. And we're going to talk about that on tomorrow's show. Dogscaping, I guess, how do you put the two things together? Mine, for instance, have worn a strange little trail around the house from where they run the same pattern. Is that what we're talking about? Well, that is one of the number one questions and comments from people about their dogs, a dog run, or the surface area that your dog is using. Of course, some dogs are better diggers than others. And trying to have a landscape and a dog at the same time can be a little bit difficult. But it's certainly a topic that we address on the show because statistics show that 66% of U.S. households own a pet. And of course, dogs are the most popular pet in the United States. So plants that are friendly to dogs, how to approach runways in the backyard and deal with that. Surface areas raised beds, all of these sorts of things are certainly topics that people are interested in. And we got a lot of pictures from around the country to share this weekend of people and their dogs and how they get along coexist, having a nice landscape and owning a dog. Not to talk bathroom situations at 8 o'clock in the morning, but I was just discussing this yesterday. Do we have to be concerned about our dogs peeing on any of our plants? Because they're killing our grass in some spots. But the plants are what I'm worried about. Yeah, you have a build of salts. And generally, what we find, and what we found from folks who own dogs and are trying to maintain a nice landscape, is that the male dogs tend to do damage to the shrubbery and the plants. And the female dogs tend to do more damage as far as the turf is concerned. And so there are ways of leaking that through. However, we found in working with our listeners that many of them are working to train their dog to go in a certain area. We talked on tomorrow's show about how you create those areas to try to train your dog to utilize those areas as opposed to your life. Full disclosure, if I'm grilling-- OK. Wow. Hey, Rick. I just wanted to piggyback, because we're having the same situation with Rudy that somebody was talking about with her dogs as far as the landscape. But he takes it one step further. Rudy's eating the blueberries off of our blueberry bush. Whoa. Yeah, and so I'm concerned about, you know, obviously, we kind of fence off our garden areas, most people do. But do you have to worry about that a little bit? Well, there's no question. And we've received comments from people also, who, for example, have organic fertilizer in the garage, and the dog got into the organic fertilizer and was eating it. Because it's bone meal and all these various natural things. So, yeah, paying attention to what plants are safe for your pet is-- I'm going to call it a "possible solution." And we're going to have some on our show. I love it. It starts at 9 o'clock. Rick Weist, Gardening Simplified on air.com. As always, great stuff. Thanks for your time today. Thank you very much.