How To Dog-Proof Your Lawn

As any loving dog owner will know, keeping your garden lawn looking pristine in a house inhabited by hounds is so not going to happen.

However, I am here to tell you that there is a magic solution that will completely dog-proof your lawn for the long-term. Despite the best efforts of our two naughty Jack Russells, our lawn is still looking fabulous and green a couple of years down the line - here's how we did it...

First up, here's how the lawn looked when we first moved in:

One massive garden renovation later, and things were looking a little like this:

On yes. More people should accessorise their gardens with random old nasty concrete flagstones, I feel.

Our garden design called for an oval lawn, so we measured one out with the aid of a hosepipe and some bamboo canes:

We ordered the turf, stomped down the soil, laid down the rolls, and cut it into a nice oval with a kitchen knife.

It looked good for about three weeks, and then the dogs basically destroyed it (dog pee + lawn = scorched yellow holes).

So we dug up the scorched parts, planted new seed, and waited for it to grow. The grass that did manage to grow (rather than being ripped up by eight enthusiastic paws) was immediately peed on, turned yellow, and had to be dug up and replanted.

Culprit Numero Uno:

This continued for a good six months - Andre was determined that he wasn't going to be beaten into submission by a 6m x 4m oval of grass and a couple of terracotta and white beasts, and so he headed out there every weekend to patiently dig up and replant the grass. Meanwhile, I had been researching online, and had come up with a solution - however, said solution was expensive, and my husband is stubborn, so The Great Andre Versus Lawn War of 2008 continued apace.

Until eventually Andre cracked and admitted defeat, we ordered the new turf, and laid it in a very similar way to the first lot. Only this time we used long wooden pegs  and a few screws to secure it to the ground.

Check it out:

Let's take a closer look:

Can you tell what it is yet?

Yep, we laid an artificial lawn. And it's awesome. It feels soft underfoot, it looks great, it requires zero maintenance, and we never have to mow the lawn again. We did agonise over the various samples, but eventually settled for a short, luscious green one, on the grounds that although the longer ones with brown grass woven into the green looked more realistic, why on earth would we want a fake lawn that permanently looked as if it needed a good mow and decent amount of watering?

Alice and Andre 1 : Penny and Enrique 0.

Muwahahahahaha!

Le Five Year Master Plan Update - French Dog Practice

Now, an extremely important element of our Five Year Master Plan to move to France is training our two naughty Jack Russells (Enrique and Penny) to behave like civilised French dogs. Here's an update on how the French dog practice is coming along, following our family holiday to Provence in July.

In many ways, life in Provence is basically the same as life in Manchester from a Jack Russell's perspective.

Plenty of time is spent relaxing in fluffy baskets, and sitting on mats with plastic turkeys:

Rather a lot of sleeping takes place:

And quite a lot of tennis-balling:

They were both very well behaved in the local cafés - well, providing Miss Penelope was allowed to sit on a knee (all the better to keep a watchful eye over the local cat population). Someone else, however, preferred to lie on the floor amid the Gauloises stubs:

French dogs probably aren't allowed to get onto the table though, are they?

And I'm fairly certain that French dogs aren't allowed to tuck themselves into bed:

Yeah. There's probably still quite a lot of practising that needs to be done. What a shame, we'll have to go back next summer and have another crack at it. Quel dommage!

How To Take Your Dogs To France

Seriously, taking your dogs to France is sooooo easy. I can't believe we haven't done it before. Here's how we did it.

First of all, we got both dogs micro-chipped. Actually we did this when they were both eight weeks old, so we were very well prepared here :-)

Next up, we got rabies vaccinations for both dogs. A few weeks later, the vet tested them both for rabies. Here's the key point - you need to have the rabies test (not the vaccination) carried out at least six calendar months before you are due to return home to England. So if you are scheduled to travel home on 1 July, you need to get the test done before 1 January. So basically, plan at least 8 months in advance. Oh, and your dog also needs to be up to date with all their standard vaccinations.

Once you have the micro-chip, the negative result of the rabies test, and the standard vaccinations, your vet will issue the doggie passport. The passport has space for a picture, which I encourage you to take full advantage of.

You'll then need to go back to your vet about two weeks before your holiday to get a Scalibur collar, and some tick and flea treatment. Your dog needs to start wearing the collar five days before you travel, and you should apply the tick and flea treatment the day before.

The best way to travel to France with dogs is via the EuroTunnel. Previously we have always travelled to France on the ferry - but when you take dogs on the ferry, you have to leave them in the car during the 1.5 hour crossing. And our two would probably eat the steering wheel if we left them in the car in the dark, smelly, noisy hold of a boat for any length of time. However, when you travel by EuroTunnel, you stay in your vehicle and keep your dogs with you. Plus the crossing takes 30 minutes, so it's a third of the time. And the area at the EuroTunnel after check-in where you wait for your train to be announced has a nice grassy fenced-off area for your little darlings to run around, get some exercise, sniff the bottoms of fellow travellers, and so on.

I thought I might have Enrique trying to sit on my head for the ten hour drive down south, but fortunately they both settled down into a big gorgeous heap of white and terracotta fluff and slept for the entire journey.

Note - you don't need to declare your dog on the way to France at Folkestone or Calais (although if your dogs are anything like mine they'll probably declare themselves regardless); you only need to do this on the way home.

Before you go on holiday, you need to book an appointment with a local French vet so your dog can be checked. The appointment needs to happen not less than 24 hours and not more than 48 hours before the time of your return journey to England. Due to the timing, you'll need to find a vet in the part of France where you're spending your holiday, not in Calais.

Here's how to find a French vet.

Visit www.pagesjaunes.fr - yep, this is the French Yellow Pages. Type Vétérinaire into Quoi, Qui, and the town into Où, and then click Trouver:

This will give you a list of the closest vets to your location. Most are located in towns rather than villages, so you'll probably need to drive for 30 mins or so to reach the closest one.

If you speak French, call the vet up (avoid lunch hour cos most people seem to be closed) and explain that you are un(e) anglais(e) passing les vacances en France with your chien, and you have need of a vétérinaire to administer the official treatment contre les tiques etc before you return home to Angleterre. If you don't speak French, go down the list asking parlez-vous Anglais? until you find someone who does. Your English vet should give you a little card explaining in various languages exactly what is required, so you can pass this on to your French vet.

Man, our French vet was awesome. He wore Hawaiian shorts, clogs, and had a snake skin pinned to the wall of his office. I need to tell our vet at home to ease up on the posters of cute puppies, and max out on the snake skin decor. Loving it. Anyway, he gave each dog a tick and flea treatment there and then, and a de-worming pill (which he said they should take later that evening with a meal), and then filled out the relevant pages in each passport to confirm that the two treatments had been provided for each dog.

He then pulled a random price out of the air, which we duly paid (in cash - don't count on your chosen vet accepting a credit card), and we were on our way.

When you arrive in Calais, you need to follow the paw symbol and get your dogs checked by the port authority vet before you check-in. Basically it's a little building with its own car park, with some dude behind a desk who conducts a thorough clinical examination scans the dog with a bar-code scanner as if they were a loaf of bread in Tesco, has a quick look at the passport, gives you a little ticket to stick in your windscreen, and you're good to go. I took the rabies certificates, but I don't think he checked them. No passport stamping or form filling, and the whole thing was done in about three minutes. Mind you, this was in the middle of the night, and it may take a little longer during the day if there are lots of hounds waiting in a queue or something.

And in terms of the price? The vaccinations, tests, passports, EuroTunnel pet fee, accommodation pet fee and French vet fee probably added up to around £300-ish per animal.

Seeing your adored Jack Russells scampering over a sun-bleached lawn chasing French tennis balls, chasing French cats down the streets of little Provençal villages, and chasing each other round the edge of the swimming pool at your rented French villa - priceless :-)

Yep, that's Penny being carried like a princess lapdog past a French chat in an attempt to minimise the inevitable (and highly embarrassing) squealing and leash-straining. She's really not that fond of cats.

Blatantly obvious disclaimer alert - discuss all the above with your vet, and do plenty of research online via official government sources, as this post is to share my personal experience only.