Puppy chewed Bark on Tree

[nortonsmom]

I have a couple of Boston Terrors....I had planted some young fruit trees and they actually chewed the bark off of them.....all the way around the trunk of the tree...is there anything I can do? Will they survive? This happend about 2 weeks ago and they are actually getting little fruits and the leaves look healthy...is there something I should do? Thanks!

 

[hoodat]

If they actually chewed the bark all around the trunk there is nothing you can do. The trees will die above where they were chewed. If there is some healthy trunk above the graft it's possible it can come back from dormant buds but if it was below the graft what will grow back will be the root stock, not the fruiting part. You may as well cut it off just above the chew and hope for the best. The growth you see is from stored food but the tree can no longer feed the part above the girdling. If, however, there is the slightest bit of unchewed bark forming a bridge across the chew there is hope the bark can grow back around the trunk, especially in the case of young trees.
There is one other way but it takes some expertise. You can take an undamaged branch and do a bridge graft to feed the top, in effect making another graft from the rootstock to the top to feed it.

 

[simple life]

Sorry to hear that. I planted 20 fruit trees this year and some of them came with those spiral plastic trunk protectors but I bought some of the hard mesh type protectors from the Gardener's Edge to put on them.
I have goats and a sheep who would love to girdle all of my trees if they had the chance.
Good luck, I hope it works out for you.