Doggone it! Hounded by a strawberry thief

MY WIFe and I miss alfie, our lovely and sadly departed working cocker spaniel. We are keen gardeners and alfie used to take an interest in what we were doing. He’d wait for the opportunity to grab an empty plastic flower pot. He thought it was great fun to be chased and usually managed to chew it before we could get it off him. On one windy day, our soft rubber kneeling mat blew across the garden. alfie retrieved it, but took a large bite out of it before we could get to him. another time we had a garlic bulb in the kitchen, which had started sprouting. I thought it would be a good idea to see if it would grow in a pot on the patio. Unfortunately, alfie had other ideas. every time we checked the pot, there was a hole where the garlic bulb had been. several times we found the bulb on the patio and replanted it. Was it being dug up by squirrels? We gave up trying to grow garlic when we saw alfie pull the bulb out of the pot and run off with it. We also had a blueberry bush in a large tub and strawberries in a planter. One day we noticed the blueberries were a bit sparse on the bottom part of the bush. We blamed the blackbirds and covered the bush with netting.

That would stop them! Then we noticed that some strawberries had been stripped from the planter. We were discussing putting netting over them when alfie, who had been sitting at our feet, walked over to the planter. With great skill, he removed a whole strawberry and swallowed it, leaving just the green stalk. It dawned on us that the blackbirds were innocent!