We have two dogs (both smallish - around 12-15kgs) and we live in the outer suburbs, so we also get possums.

Normally this is not an issue - sometimes the dogs bark at night at the possums, but they're not too bad.

Lately for reasons unknown to us, the possums have occasionally come down to fight with our dogs ... DH actually had to pull a possum off one of our dogs last night, as we heard some awful howling and he went out and found the possum biting into our dog's neck!

DH shone a torch right at the possum which made it freeze, and he unlocked the possum's teeth, got it off our dog, and put the possum in the bushes, and it ran away pretty quickly. Both pups are fine.

How oh how do you get possums to not come into your yard?

My googling only seems to lead to possum boxes (which don't seem very friendly), poisons (again, not friendly and completely not ok given we have pets and our neighbours mostly also have dogs and cats!), or things which emit high frequencies (again - not going to be any good for the other local pets!).

We don't leave food out, the only fruit/veggie plants we have are a lemon tree and a rosemary bush, and our bins are kept in the garage.

Does anyone have any ideas, or anything which has worked for you?

I'm worried we're either going to end up with mangled puppies or dead possums in our yard ...