Missing Dahlia

When I posted the picture of my first dahlia flower of the year it reminded me that I hadn't seen my favourite dahlia appear so far. There are a few other plants in that part of the garden, but the dahlia should have been popping up above them by now.

I went looking for it and this is what I found:

A whole bunch of chewed-off stems. I don't know if rabbits or snails are responsible for munching each shoot that has come up. But hopefully the fact that there are still a couple of tiny leaves means that the plant hasn't given up completely, and a bit of protection will allow it to get growing.

I cut the bottom off a 3-litre milk bottle and pushed it into the soil around the plant, and some snail pellets were dropped into the bottle.

Hopefully the bottle will stop rabbits, and the pellets will deal with snails. When I looked at it later after some rain there were slugs on the bottle, so they may have been the actual culprits, but the pellets will deal with them too.