DogHouse

The dog has never used her doghouse since we moved it from the breezeway to the back yard pen. Had we enclosed the breezeway with the doghouse inside, there wouldn't be any room for humans. El Doggo has a nice warm bed in the new enclosed breezeway. I constructed a king bed from used lumber and tossed her faux sheepskin cedar bed in the completed frame. To keep the white fur clean, I added a wool blanket. One night, tired of being woken up in the middle of the night with her grunts of unh,unh, unh I gotta pee, I closed her up in the back hall after her sortie outside. The temperatures in the breezeway were 20 degrees higher than outside but still colder than what Mandy was used to. If she got sick or chilled, I'd be sleeping in the doghouse.

I removed the dog bed from the breezeway and substituted a thick quilted moving pad folded and covered with the wool blanket. I slept soundly the rest of the night while Mandy curled up nose to toes on her cedar shaving bed in the back hall. The few times Mandy was confined to her pen in the back yard, she'd bark at itinerant 'coons or possum. It kept Dawn awake.

The cat finds the insulated, carpeted doghouse a great place to watch the backyard and groom his fur. The roof is an even better perch for the panorama. If the cat spends too much time in the house, you-know-who gets jealous and tries to nose El Gatto out. Makes no difference that she cares to sleep on the red chair in the garage, in the sun on the driveway, in the dog bed in the entryway or on the custom built dog bed in the breezeway. It's my house and you can't have it. So There!