Who owns the fire hydrant?..............................

I have begun to taper my running in preparation for my six mile race this Saturday, (Besides the pasta dinner and the new shirt, tapering is my favorite part of racing!) so I took the dogs for a walk last night to stretch my legs a little bit.

As we came to the corner at the end of our street, Emma did her usual sniff sniff squat at the fire hydrant before I could stop her........... Right on the newly planted coneflower! (See above photo) Granted, the fire hydrant is technically located on the planters property, but everybody knows it is a dog's duty to lift his leg on (or for her to sqaut next to) the fire hydrant. Sorta of simular to the right of passage of being able to get your drivers license at sixteen, or being able to vote at eighteen. Maybe one doesn't participate, but one has the right if the desire is there. I will even admit to promting my dogs to explore the hydrant (pre-plants of course!) telling them it was their doggy duty, and they owed it to the other dogs to enhance their sniffing experience when they too made their duty bound stop at the hydrant.

So, now my quandary............ How do I teach them to leave this particular hydrant alone, but allow them to continue to enjoy the one at the other end of the walk? Trust me, I have tried to explain that plants DO NOT thrive on drinking urine when they have tried initiating all the plants in my back yard, and they either don't get it, or choose to ignore me. (Most likely it is both.) I also feel bad about yanking them away from this particular hydrant when it has been a prominate stop since their very first walk.

Then I think about how I would feel if every dog that passed my yard watered my flowers, and away I yank. Before the current owners purchased the house it was quite run down, and I do appreciate their efforts to improve it. The overgrown bushes are history, replaced with a nice aray of green plants next to the house. The grass is mowed on a regular basis now, and this is a good thing. Once upon a time, when they were finished at the hydrant, the dogs used to play a quick game of hide-n-seek in the tall grass, and I always worried about what they would flush out of hiding besides each other. Still, I can't get my mind around what beautification the current owners had in mind when they dug out the surrounding grass and planted the flowers. (Do you think it improved the look? Maybe, if they had added a nice mulch, it might have been a different story.)

Potentially, years from now, it might even become a safety hazard as coneflowers have a tendancy to mass produce and grow tall. What happens if one of the houses on the street catch on fire and the fire department can't locate the hydrant among the plants? Maybe the dogs that continue to lift/squat on this particular hydrant ( Not my little well-behaved cuties of course, but there are bound to be others.) will earn a comindation for keeping the flowers from thriving and saving a home and/or a life by keeping the hydrant visible and flower free. Now that would be something worth blogging about!