OUR FENCE IS DONE!!!
They finished yesterday late-afternoon... I took all night for all the pictures I took to get uploaded. Everything went great! The only problem we have is Hilo doesn't want to come inside. lol.
I got some good video and action shots!
Here is a nice picture of Hilo enjoying the yard:
Here are the best action shots...
There is a lot more here:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/brada1878/
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I got some video of their first reaction to the yard, keep in mind it was REALLY windy and VERY dusty, we have some landscaping to do. Here are the video....
Jen shows a little bit of her motherly paranoia:
Release the hounds....
Playing in the yard part 1 & 2:
And while everyone else was playing, Maui was hunting dirt:
Here are the particulars....
The Pens (we need to add a sun shade to the tops):
The Gates (we need to paint them):
The wire on the gate:
The Shibas in their "Shiba area" (we already had to use it, the big dogs ganged up on Maui... they like to pick on him... that's why we made this area for them):
The Coyote roller would have doubled the price of the fence, so he suggested a common practice in this area for keeping Coyote out, using loose barb-less wire at the top of the fence. The only issue is you have to buy it in .25 mile rolls... so that's way more than we need. So he has another job in a few weeks he needs to use the wire for and he will have enough left for us, then he will come and install it.
I tried to get some dogs and/or Jen in these pics to give a since of the size and space. Keep in mind Jen is 5 feet tall.
Rui - That is my favorite shot too... I have no idea how I got that action, but it's cool! Thanx!
Jen - I think you are right... poor Ahi, I have a sad picture of her looking out the window while the other play. I hate it for her.
For the record, I think I'm falling for Lani a bit. She seems like such a sweetie. I love it in the first video when she comes up to say hi with her ears laid flat. Joey does the same thing when he's happy to see me and it just melts my heart every time!
There are a couple of great shots on the flikr page with tongues hanging out in every which direction which I love too!
Keep the spam coming!
Dave - I don't blame you, Lani is super sweet and loving... she is really nice. She's my GF, I have three: Kaia, Loa, & Lani. Ahi, not so much... she is my buddy but doesn't put on the charm for me like the others.
Rachael - I think you are right, she is extra crazy w/o Ahi out.
Patty - Thanx!
Romi - Kaia was there, just off in her little world eating plants:
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So today we worked in the yard, we are in high gear to try and reduce the dust... The dust really sux. It's hard tho because we can't really have grass since we are on a shared well... our neighbors would kill us if they saw us watering a yard!
We added some cedar mulch to the pup's pens in order to make it softer for them and we added a sun shade to the tops. Ahi spent some time in a pen since she can't play and she really seemed to like it.
We have decided that we can grow grass in the Shiba's area since our neighbors can't see us watering that area... our hope is that we can get is seeded and growing in that area then slowly add it to other areas. Meantime we can close off that area to allow the grass to grow and we will add gravel to the other areas to keep the dust down.
Tomorrow we remove the rest of the cactuses, stack the fire wood and plant the grass.
I'll post some pics tomorrow night, not sure how interesting they will be but I'll post them anyway.
Good luck with the dust reduction. Sounds like an uphill battle to me.
Dust reduction huh? I think Dave hit it on the head with the term uphill battle.
Your *Dog Park* looks awesome and it seems pretty obvious that the dogs just love it. You are going to become king of the action shots out there. I love the ones you posted today.
The Shiba area is going to work out nicely, those *older* dogs will enjoy a break from the young big dogs. Also, it's amazing that goats were somehow bred into Shibas, without any hint of it in their apperance, just their need to eat green vegetation all the time.
I can't wait to see Ahi out there tearing it up. Hilo's strides are huge.
http://www.upco.com/cgi-bin/Upcol.storefront/4814943a00ed087aea6dc0a80aa506d9/Search/Run
Patty - Thanx for the helpful suggestion... we had thought about using a blower but didn't know where to look. Thanx! As for fake grass, I looked into that and the price was just to painful... it requires a bed of 3" thick gravel under it... to do that in some of the areas of our yard will cost over $3k!
Regarding the dust on the dogs: Long intro, but here we go. Since we have only a few miserable hot humid days in Mn., we have no AC in our house and rely on fans for the most part to stay comfortable. Anyway, my husband found a large (but portable) industrial strength fan at Sam's Club for the worst days of summer (funny thing, we call them "dog days" here in MN!). Among a variety of other uses he's come up with, he has found the fan works well to "blow dry" Josephine's fur after her shower... Lots of wind, wind speed can be varied, no heat to cause problems with doggie overheating, etc. Anyway, something like that may work well for dust removal as well, if placed outside like on the patio? If you have no Sam's Club, I imagine such an item could be found at Menards, Home Depot, or even your handy local hardware store.
We used cedar mulch/chips in the pens, worked great. I'm just concerned it might blow away if we put it in the yard.
We covered the pens with a sun shade, this thing amazes me! It keeps the area in the pens at least 10 degrees cooler, I mean the difference is rather mind bending:
Ahi enjoyed the new shade:
Also added some cedar mulch to the pens, its very soft:
We removed all the Sagebrush from the "Shiba Area", getting it ready for grass planting (this was really hard work):
Finally, we got the wood stacked along the fence - works as a wind blocker too!
I'm not very concerned about them climbing it and jumping off of it during play or anything, they don't seem that interested and they are not that dumb.
So we have decided just to watch it and see what they do, so far they show it little attention. We stacked almost 5' high and rather steep, so I don't think they could climb it if they wanted too. As Kona grows tho he will probably become a problem since Kai-Ken are climbers.
My latest thought is maybe using some 2x4s and cinder blocks to make a table to stack the wood on along the fence, this would raise it even higher and put like a 12" gap at the bottom. I'm sure the dogs would not be able to climb that.
What do you guys think?
I'd like to keep the wood in the yard to reduce the risk of theft.