Pets and Tomatoes

by Ruth Ann Martin
(Kalamazoo MI)

About 7 years ago we moved to a new house in town. My neighbor on the north side of my house loved to grow tomatoes in pots and did so each summer. They didn't do too well but they did well enough to produce some tomatoes.

She also was afraid of dogs - except that is, my dog Max a gentle, English Black Lab. He would go over to her house on occasion as dogs do wander sometimes.

Come summer she bought her potted tomato plant and set it in her back yard not too far from her back door, where it could get the sun. We watched it as the tomatoes began to grow and turn red almost ready to pick until one day my lab came home carrying a nice red juicy tomato which he had picked from my neighbor's potted tomato plant.

Now, I scolded him but it didn't seem to matter in the long run because he picked almost all the tomatoes off that plant that summer. That was the end of her potted tomato plants.

Now that she doesn't grow tomatoes anymore he has decided my tomato plants are fair game. This summer I caught him a number of times sitting in the grass playing with a tomato plant he had gone into my garden and picked.

Sometimes he eats them and sometimes he just plays with them and leaves them to be found by whatever creature is willing to finish them off.