Good Weather For Ducks

It has certainly been a good summer to have our new covered doggy condos in place. Since I put them up it seems like it has rained just about every day here in Lake Elmore. The news last week said it was a record for Montpelier where they received 8.25 inches of rain in July. Montpelier is about 25 minutes south of us so we have probably had a similar amount of rain here.

All of the rain hasn't caused much damage here at our place. We did have some damage on the class four road which leads to our cabin but the town brought in some gravel a few days ago and patched it up. Other towns near by have lost entire roads due to the rain and have applied for disaster relief.

I had one exciting evening a couple of weeks ago when we had a heavy downpour. I was sitting upstairs on a Sunday afternoon playing my guitar and happened to look out to check on the dogs and there was a river running right down the center of the dog yard! The dogs were all sitting on their deck watching the river flow. I jumped up and into my rain gear and ran out to the yard in a panic. I had visions of all of the sand which I had moved into the yard by wheel barrow washing down the river. All that work gone in the matter of a few minutes... What had happened was the curtain drain which I had dug at the top of the dog yard had over flowed. The spring on the hillside above which usually only runs in the spring with the heavy snow melt had begun to flow and filled the foot and a half deep ditch. When I dug the ditch with the excavator I hadn't quite gotten through the bank to the stream so it wasn't draining like it should. I spent the next half hour digging with the pick ax until I had cut another five feet through the bank and then the water began to drain and run away from the dog yard. Once I got the water out it wasn't as bad as I had thought. Only a little of the sand actually left the dog yard. Much of it was just moved around and with some raking it was almost as good as new. I suppose it was a good test for my ditch. If we made it through that heavy rain it will probably be fine next spring with the normal run off.

That was the big excitement since my last post. Otherwise things seem to drain pretty well on our hillside. The garden is growing like crazy and we've got tons of cucumber, squash, peas and greens. There are plenty of green tomatoes but we'll have to wait and see if we get enough warm weather for them to ripen.

As August quickly slips by my thoughts are quickly turning to fall dog training. Last year we started running with the carts around mid September. That's only a few weeks away! I've really missed not running the dogs this summer.

Until next time.

Summer 2008 Dog Yard Renovations

As I wrap up my dog yard project for the season I’ve decided to do a brief (?) write up. Peace Pups had a great 2007-2008 season with great snow conditions and plenty of great guests joining us for tours. I promised the dogs that I would fancy their lodging up in return for all of their hard work over the winter. With out them there would be no Peace Pups.

As the temperatures began to warm in April my thoughts turned to what I would do to improve the yard. One thing that was fresh in my mind was all of the shoveling I had to do in the yard this past winter due to the large amount of snow. It got to the point where the entrance to each dog house looked like the entrance to an igloo with a small tunnel at each. There was a point when you could not even see half of the houses and could walk right other the top of them. That’s fine for insulation and wind protection but every time we received another couple of inches of snow or the wind blew I had to go out and shovel those tunnels out again. It became a almost daily occurrence and my back was not especially happy about it. Another ongoing issue with our dog yard has been water and mud in the fall and spring. We are on a slight hill side and there are a couple of small springs above the yard. In the spring when there was lot of water in the ground we would have a small stream running right through the middle of the yard. This could also happen in the fall when we have November rains and the ground becomes saturated. Last summer I created a ditch through the middle of the yard to pull some of the water away but it wasn’t great having a ditch in the center of the yard.

My first thought was to build a dog barn. This would provide a nice dry space for the dogs. Having grown up and then worked on a farm as a teen I was familiar with the set up for dairy cows. Why not dogs? I began to look into scour some of the fantastic resources available on line for information on dog barns. They are being used in some areas such a Alaska where the weather is much colder and many mushers are running shorter coated dogs. I believe the main goal for these barns is to keep the dogs warmer in the winter. I also posted questions in regard to what I was planning and began to receive some feed back.

The first issue I ran into was tethering versus pens. Initially I was going to build eight pens to house two dogs each. The meant a very large barn and many gates to work through. I have had two kennel pens as well as tether set ups and came to the conclusion that I really prefer the tethers. To me it feels like the dogs are a more open environment and easier to interact with when I’m walking through the yard. They also have their own private space where they can be away from any other dog. I find that many of them enjoy this and are much more relaxed if they don’t have to be “on” all of the time. I also find it easier for me to do my chores. Feeding, clean up, watering, shots etc. seem to go much more quickly as I walk from dog to do without having to open and close gates and worry about anyone getting out.

It became obvious to me that staying with tethers would work better for us. That decided I revisited the barn idea. Was there a way to build a barn that would work with tethers? The only thing I could envision was a large twenty four foot by eighty foot roof covering the entire yard. One problem I foresaw with that was snow load. With roof that big in order to have it shed snow it would have to have some kind of amazing height. Another consideration was smell. I had read of others that had fully covered runs and issues with odor and dust due to lack of rain. I read about one person installing sprinklers to flush the runs out from time to time.

What about flooring? If one of my main goals was for the dogs to be drier it seemed like I really wanted a space for them to get off of the ground. As I went round and round with this there were days where I was ready to bag the whole barn idea but I didn’t.

What all of this evolved into was what we have taken to calling the doggie condos. The condos have a six foot by six foot deck for each dog. Their houses sit on top of these decks and each has a six foot by nine foot thirty degree pitch roof over it. These are light enough that they are able to be moved if need be. They provide a dry space for each dog to hang out. They provide great shade. They are very open so they don’t block the breeze in the summer and they will keep the snow off of their houses in the winter. I have them set up so it will allow me to drive my snow blower through the center of the yard to clear the snow if we have another heavy snow season like the past one.

A bonus to this set up is that for our town a building permit is not required for structures under eight foot square. The doggie condos are basically glorified dog houses.

Next is a brief photo essay of the project as it progressed over the last month.

Step one: Preparing the actual yard and improving the drainage issues. I rented a mini excavator to level the yard out so the doggie condos would sit flatter and along the same plane. We had four or five stumps in the yard which had always made it difficult to place tether posts. The excavator made short work of those! I also dug a four foot deep curtain drain across the back side of the yard to pull away and water that might come down the slope. I then had thirty five yards of sand delivered which I spread through the newly leveled side of the yard. I had filled another section of the yard with sand last summer and was very happy with the drainage and lack of mud. This is a picture of the yard leveled; evenly spaced tethers and new layer of sand.

Step two: Building the decks. I put together a lumber order and had it delivered and unloaded in our driveway which would become the doggie condo construction shop for the next two weeks. I built the units so the roof could be separate making them much easier to move. Here we are framing the decks in the driveway.

Moving the decks into the dog yard so that cars can once again pass through the driveway. The deck seem to be a immediate hit with the dogs!

The decks in place in the dog yard.

Step three: The driveway becomes a roof assembly line. These projects always seem to take on a life of their own. When I put the first metal roof on I had the bright idea of painting it to see how it would look. Well with one painted they all would need to be painted in order to match. Some of the metal had rust on it so of course that needed to be wire brushed off before painting. Before I knew it we had another two hours of labor per roof. I think the final result was worth the time though and it should help the metal last longer.

Now we are almost done. All of the roofs are on, my wife says she thinks it looks like a state park... I still need to buy 50 cinder blocks to block the corners of the decks up off the ground then do the final leveling and I think that will be it for this summer. The doggy condos seem to be working out very well. We had a rainy day this past week and we had multiple places to stay dry while hanging out with the dogs. I can’t wait for winter to see how they work with snow!

Officially Spring

It is truly spring here now. The snow finally did melt off of the flower bed as it always does and now the spring flowers are in full bloom. I may even have to fire up the lawn mower soon! luckily I don't have to do much mowing here; we have a "real" Vermont lawn which mostly consist of dandelions, wild strawberry, clover and a little bit of grass. We've made a big effort to expand the flower beds and vegetable garden to decrease the lawn area. I figure if it takes more than a half hour to mow it's too big. There are so many other thinks I would rather be doing than mowing the lawn.

I'm having a lot more interest in the bicycle tours this summer and we're up and running now. I purchased a van which works great for hauling bikes and customers and I've got a fleet of brand new Diamond Back bikes from Chuck's Bike Shop located just down the road in Morrisville. The riding has been great with nice temperatures in the mid sixties. This week the lilacs, apple trees and dogwood are all flowering so the air is very fragrant as you ride along. With the new cross style bikes I bought this year I have been getting out and finding some amazing roads that I had never ridden before. I have always ridden either on the pavement or in the woods and never spent much time riding the dirt back roads of the area. I now see what I was missing out on. Not only is there way less traffic but the views are much nicer as well. Of course some of those old roads have some pretty steep grades on them but at least there aren't dozens of cars whizzing by you as you grind your way up.

I built a pair of lean too structures for the dog yard last week as prototypes and they seem to be working well. Now all I have to do is build twelve more! I don't have roofing on them yet but I did find a great deal on a load of used roofing. All I have to do is pick it up this week. The pups got a new swimming pool this week too. They've been upgraded from a four foot kiddie pool to a six foot. I'm really excited about the improvements that I'm making this summer. It will really polish things up.



That's about all the news that's fit to print from here in Lake Elmore today. Until next time!