I scrapped the ugly fence that I’d built around my garden last spring that was supposed to keep out the bunnies. It didn’t work. The little stinkers had proved themselves too smart and persistent, busting right through the fence in order to ransack our garden yet again.

I’ve been looking into other natural bunny deterrents and read about using dog hair. This sounded brilliant! Wild dogs have hunted rabbits in the wild for centuries, and later, domesticated dogs were trained to hunt rabbit for sport. Bunnies are wired to get the heck out of dodge when a dog comes trotting along. It’s in their DNA!

Armed with this knowledge and dog brush in hand, I waited patiently as this year’s first batch of seeds began to push up through the soil. Gershwin, our beagle/box mix, definitely loved all of the extra attention he began to receive, but being a short-haired breed, he failed to contribute much hair to the cause.

Meanwhile, my wife had a better idea. She walked down the block to our local dog groomer and asked for a large bag of dog hair clippings. They were curiously happy to oblige, and within minutes the kids had our garden bed and all of the precious seedlings sprinkled in dog hair. We’ll need to spread more hair around every few days and after it rains to maintain the effects of the dog scent barrier. Needless to say, Gershwin has taken a new interest in our garden. Hopefully the opposite will be true for the bunnies!