If you were here in Southern CA, I'd say your pest was the ubiquitous Western Pocket Gopher (rated as one of the west's worst garden pests).

In your area, I suppose it may be VOLES. But it appears that Georgia does have three native gophers:

1. Southeastern Pocket Gopher Geomys pinetis Common Coastal plain Most common pocket gopher in GA

2. Colonial Pocket Gopher Geomys colonus Rare SE Georgia All gophers live in subettanean habitat

3. Sherman's Pocket Gopher Geomys fontanelus Rare SE Georgia Only one colony know to exist

Odds are, if yours is a gopher, it's the Southeastern Pocket Gopher.
I know no effective control for a colony of gophers.
Poison a gopher, and you will likely kill a cat or a hawk or an owl or a fox.
Traps -- I'd try it, but I hope you have a strong stomach.
There are far too many here to even think of eradicating them.
We plant in squats or "Gopher Baskets."

Jeri

Hi Jeri, I never even thought about it being a gopher. My sister really thinks they just rotted because of all our rain but I would think it would have looked all rotten looking and they do not. It has been a very rainy and cold year.

Poison is definitely out of the question. We have tooo many cats and dogs and children running around to go that route. I will investigate more tomorrow and hope it is the rain. Thanks!!

I will look for the photos I took last year of the similarly-attacked roses here.

The good news is that, if your roses are on their own roots, they may be salvageable.
Cut them back, and put them to soak in water for a few days.
Then, re-plant them in pots, and see if they don't grow new roots. We haven't lost a gopher-eaten plant in years.

But it is unlikely that you can ever plant in that location without some under-ground protection.

Jeri

No roots or anything attached. And my beagles have been digging all over out in the woods and leaving holes and a few I checked out looked like it had a deeper hole or tunnel.

I think that's definitely consistent with your having a critter problem. If it was a root disease/fungus I think you'd probably see not "no roots", but rather "mostly no roots plus the remains of a few roots that were black and slimy looking".

If it looks like a sharpened pencil on the end, then voles (I've never seen gopher damage, but I have seen what voles can do). If you have them, then you can look up solutions, but many have to resort to lining the planting hole completely with hardware cloth making a kind of pot, and then planting the rose in the "pot".

I don't think I've ever seen rose roots rot from too much rain or water, but I haven't seen everything.

I will soak it and repot it and see if it does grow new roots.

If you can quickly find a source for a horticultural rooting hormone powder (say - at a garden center or something - such hormone powders used to be easy to find when I was a teenager in the 1970's, but I haven't looked recently so I don't know if they're still easy to find or not - "Rootone" is a famous and good brand of what I'm thinking about) you might even want to purchase a small amount and dust the underground remains of your rose with that powder after you soak it and before you repot it. If the rose is still in semi-decent condition (& the problem isn't a root rotting disease) the rooting hormone powder should stimulate the rose to put out new roots.

To me that still suggests your problem is probably an animal.

I think the key is the dogs digging for something.

This is what they mean by "sharpened":

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And if you have this problem, the dogs will probably dig for the varmints.

Jeri

Thanks, Jeri. I have seen them actually whittled to a point. But in either case, roots, gone. The dogs may be digging to find the varmints.

-- The dogs may be digging to find the varmints.

*** Ya THINK?

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Jeri

Send your sweet babies over this way to help my babies find this terrible critter. What kind of dogs are those Jeri? They certainly look like they can do the job!!

They are both Dalmatians.
The one in front is Miss Brisa -- a normal short, or smooth-coated Dalmatian.
The other is Mr. Becket.
Becket is a purebred LONG-COATED Dalmatian. And actually, he has grown hair since this photo was taken, only a month or so ago.
They hear and smell the gophers under ground, so our front lawn currently resembles a WWI Trench Warfare battlefield.

Jeri

Brisa and Becket are so pretty. I didn't even think about them being Dalmations. Can you say DUH!!!!

Er, well, most Dalmatian breeders would vastly prefer not to think of Becket as a Dalmatian. ;-)
He's an "Inconvenient Truth."

Jeri

Okay bringing this post back up due to more activity of voles. I ended up saving one of my roses that was attacked earlier but now they have moved to the back yard and have started attacking my hosta. Any suggestions as to anything new out there anyone has tried to get rid of voles without putting out poison due to my pets. I am at my wits end and trying to keep them away from my english roses. Please help if you have anything that works great. I have set out some traps and plan on planting anything new in pots to protect them or line the holes with pea gravel or wire. I already have so many roses and lilies and perennials that I am hoping to keep from the voles and theres no way I can dig them up and replant to keep them safe. Believe me though, I would if I could. Thanks, Judy

Prettypetals,

Do you see Vole holes? They should not be mounded like a Mole would create. Any Vole paths in the grass where they are running?
Ok, i'm including a link to a Video below on Voles.
I've personally used these techniques this season with great results.
Here in Pa. we are not allowed to capture them live or move them to another area.

So, the link below on Voles is not for the faint of heart to watch. Please do not watch if it will offend you.

Here is a link that might be useful: Vole control

Hi Jim, I will watch the video after my hubby watches it because yes I am faint of heart and don't like to see anything hurt but I did catch one last night. I can set the traps but can't empty them so gotta wait on hubby to empty it. Yes I do have holes in quite a few spots but really don't see paths but they are mainly in my beds where I have mulch and they have chewed the bottoms off my roses and hosta. Pretty darn sure its voles. I gotta control them somehow before they hit my english rose beds. Thanks, Judy

I second the suggestion for underground protection, I live in gopher paradise and I have to plant anything that's not 'gopher resistant' (which really just means poisonous) in either gopher baskets or gopher-wire lined raised beds.

Beautiful dogs! Mine love to dig after gophers too, they rarely catch anything though.

After you watch the video Prettypetals, I'll post pics of how I made the top coverings from rain spouting I had laying in the cellar. And what hardware (Nails) I used.
Very easy and simple.

I'm just going to go ahead and post the pics.
Take a piece of rain spouting like shown below. Cut with tin-snips or hacksaw to size. Use a file to elimanate any rough edges.
Drill a hole/s in the spouting and use long nails or screws to hold it in place. Make sure hole/s do not interfere with the traps or are located where the Vole hole is, because the long nail may go slanted a bit.
Then, mainly just follow video instructions:

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Hey Jim, Someone on the hosta forum posted a link that catches voles similar to your way. It looks like it would work great. I will definitely have to try it. Thanks again, Judy

Worked great here Prettypetals. Best of luck!

Yes Jim that is the same video someone else posted for me. And no that didn't make me faint at heart, lol! I will keep trying my traps for now and look around for something to use like the rainspout you used. Thanks for helping me out. Judy

Having spent 10 years fighting voles I have to say it is not this easy catching voles in rose beds that are rich compost covered with mulch. First, voles don't make holes like those in the video which were mole holes being used by voles. Nor do they make visible tunnels in the mulch. In fact there is no way to tell where they are except by digging for them which I used to do and I have found them and even their nests which they line with grass. Unfortunately in a rose bed with loose composty soil that you can literally reach your hand down in the whole thing collapses. There is no way you can trap them because they disappear and can reappear somewhere else tunneling as they go through the loose soil. They don't follow established mole tunnels and they don't have obvious holes they pop up through. As to killing them, I tried drenching with a clorox solution and I made a stabbing device and I tried flooding. I also vole-proofed the garden with wire mesh to a depth of eight inches. I'm not sure if any of this worked because the cats still catch them but the damage now is minimal. Roses chopped off by voles will survive in many cases and I have quite a few growing on the stub plus the hairball of their own roots and I think they all bloomed this year.

Well I have to say my holes were much smaller than in the picture. But I did manage to capture one so far and am very happy about that but I am sure there are more out there. I will just keep trying to trap them and from now on everything will be planted with hardware cloth to prevent the dang things from being able to gnaw on my plant. I believe all my hosta they have chewed up will survive and several of my knockout roses didn't survive but one Nearly Wild rose did so I am happy for that.

I think the video is very misleading. Pine voles do not live in lawns and nor do I believe they use mole holes. They live in the soft floor of the woods often the needles of the pine woods...hence the name pine vole. They do not even eat grass but rather they are like little beavers that gnaw away at roots the way beavers gnaw on trees. They have thick heads with big front teath and tiny little eyes and they almost never go above ground. They don't even tunnel like moles but rather sort of force their way through the loose surface material and they do not I believe get deeper than about two inches. Thick mulch is a perfect environment for them because they can force their way through it easily. When they attack a rose they don't actually go after the roots because they are much too deep but rather gnaw through the cane usually about 1-2 inches below the surface causing the rose to topple over. Obviously if the rose is on its' own roots or has the bud union below the stub possibly with its own roots the rose will probably survive. If it is a grafted rose gnawed off below the bud union the rose is doomed.

There is another type of vole called the meadow vole which I have never seen where we live in CT that is more like a mole and lives in lawns but to my knowledge this type of vole is not a threat to roses.