Every
year, Mom and I would make delicious red raspberry jams and preserves to enjoy
all winter long. We had grown two of the best thirty foot rows of
raspberry bushes just for that purpose. There was one particular year
that was looking like a bumper crop. The morning we went out to pick our
berries, there wasn’t a single ripe berry on a single branch. The whole
patch was picked clean! A few days later, as more berries began to ripen
to perfection, we found the culprit! Our collie-shepherd farm dog had
discovered the perfect way to curl his lips and use his teeth to gently pick
each ripe raspberry. We never thought we would have to fence out the dog
more than the birds from our berry patch. Every summer after that we had
the most forlorn looking dog sitting outside the new raspberry fence.
