Sadie Tomato

I have a very interesting dog named Sadie.  We got her from CAPS (Citizens for Animal Protection) when she was about 4 months old.  They thought she was half black lab and half border collie.  Based on that information I was hoping for a border collie brain - one that wanted to obey, wanted to work, needed a job.  What I got was a party animal who never met a stranger but has lousy manners.  Now that she is 3 years old she is starting to spend very short periods of time out of her crate with my grandsons.  The boys have dogs but shriek every time I mention letting Sadie out to play with them.  She is slow to figure out how to be a good citizen.

For the past several years we have grown tomatoes in the spring.  I'm not much of a gardener when it comes to food products but I do love fresh tomatoes.  I do better growing dye materials like marigolds and madder.  This spring the tomatoes just went crazy.  Not only did we have huge plants but they were totally weighed down with lots and lots of very edible tomatoes.  When I go out to pick them I toss the bad ones out into the yard.  My only intention has been to get them out of the garden bin so I wouldn't be tempted to pick them up again thinking they were good ones.  Unfortunately, it seems that I've also been training Sadie to run after them, pick them up and eat them.

Sadie comes out to feed the livestock with me morning and evening.  Usually she disappears as soon as she comes out the door and I don't see her again till we are headed back to the house.  She makes the rounds of the fences, checks on all the cats, some of whom appreciate the attention while others don't.  She barks at the goats and the llamas and alpacas.  She wants to run in the pasture with Steele, our Welsh pony.  But all of these activities are "touch and go."  I generally can lay eyes on her about 20% of the time we are outside.

What I discovered this past week is that part of the time I can't see her, Sadie is picking tomatoes.  She jumps up on the side of the garden bin, grabs the tomatoes off the plant and eats them.  She isn't at all particular about their ripeness - she will just as easily eat the green ones as the red ones.  And if she finds rotten ones out in the grass she rolls on them.  Yuck.  I know having rotten tomatoes smeared across her shoulders and back isn't doing her any harm even if I'm not happy about it.  Eating all those tomatoes may be more harmful.  At least it has given her horrible gas.

Fortunately for all of us, the tomatoes are quickly succumbing to the heat.  The plants are getting rangy and starting to brown out.  We already have about 30 pounds of tomato sauce and spaghetti sauce in the freezer.  We are still getting a few tomatoes but I don't expect it to last much longer. 

I'm happy with that.