I use something very similar to this:
It is more attractive and more sturdy than chicken wire. My dogs do well enough keeping most rabbits away, so keeping the dogs away is the real trick! Stupid girl dog. She went over a rock well and jumped over this fence with 2 strands of wire above it, then cleared the rock wall on the OTHER side and landed on my lettuce. Once in there she picked up a 6" plastic pot full of rocks and scattered it around. Then picked up a Tupperware thing full of starter plants from seed and carried it to the other side.
Then she left. No real damage but for 4 lettuce plants.
Last year my garden was a war zone. I trimmed back rose bushes and intertwined the thorn branches into the fence. I put stakes out away from the fence and put up strands of wire (dogs can't jump well over long distances and clear a 3.5' fence, more of an UP type of jump). I placed random stakes inside the fence so she had nowhere to land. I placed a swing along the fence so she couldn't even get there. (contractors were working behind the fence last summer and knocked out a few of my 6' fence pickets continuously, hence the motivation to get back there and bark at them through the fence holes).
Eventually my cumulative work paid off. But by that point the combination of garden destruction and the difficulty I had of getting back there made it not worth the effort. Stupid grumble (I mean that in that my female dog is unintelligent). But she's so cute with her floppy ears and whatnot.
As a somewhat related story: my girl dog (my boy dog is damn good, so no boy dog stories get told) kills things. Rabbits, squirrels, birds. She ran down a deer once at my uncles house (it fell jumping a fence, she caught it and didn't know what to do). Basically, any animal dumb enough to go in my backyard had better be smart enough to know it is risking death.
On occasion she brings us these prizes. My wife is usually not-so-happy to receive a slightly chewed on squirrel. She doesn't chew them up too bad (my dog, not my wife) let alone try to eat them or gods forbid roll in their guts (unlike if my boy dog finds a dead fish at the lake). But on one occasion she brought my wife a headless squirrel. Per my wifes testimonial, she couldn't find the head. It HAD to be in the backyard somewhere. But alas. I couldn't find it either.
A couple months later the dogs are coming in at night and acting like camels. Not only the girls dog - who was a stray in Tulsa for months per the vet so she drinks when she can as much as she can and will eat until she throws up. I told you this dog isn't bright. I digress . . . so they were BOTH coming in and drinking like they had no water all day. I just thought they were getting picky and shifted from a desire for pond scum to filtered water. So I started putting water out for them each morning in a farm bucket (kept it from freezing too).
So early this spring I'm cleaning out the half-barrel water garden (old whiskey barrel) / dog water source that has turned into a hippo pond for the much aforementioned stupid girl dog (she hops right in, plants no longer survive in there. Cattails, lilys, irises, hyacinth, water lettuce, all dead. She also ate the fish out of it. "Girl, why does your breath smell like koi?" Thanks for that.). Come spring it is stagnant, low on water, and full of leaves and other garbage. As I got to the bottom scooping it out the water smelled like a swamp, but this time not the usual swamp smell - it was particularly bad.
Lo and Behold! I'm chucking out cups of water and suddenly something chunky flies out. I gaze upon it as it sails through the air, unable to place it. Not a rock. Not a dirt clump. Not a dead fish. Something my boy dropped in there? It lands on the already drenched ground with a dull splat and rolls to a horrific stop. A semi mummified and well soaked squirrel head is looking back at me. Which was nice.
It may have been the first time since the inception of marriage that a husband had been excited to tell his wife he had located a missing squirrel head. We did not save it.
