Cove Mountain Kennels

I absolute love my Dog Den dog houses, but if you would like to build one of your own rather than buy one, I ran across some plans on the Resha Sled Dog website. They look fairly simple and straight forward; made with one sheet of plywood. The only thing I would suggest adding is metal corner bead (for finishing drywall corners) around the door to keep dogs from chewing on the edges.

To go right to their website, click on their name above. I have also copied the information below.

 

ONE SHEET (4′ X 8′) PLYWOOD DOG HOUSE

Measurements are for ½” plywood.  Exterior grade is recommended.  Nailing strips should be used for reinforcing the contact points.  When using ¾” material nailing strips are not necessary, however, note that the floor should then measure 33 ½” in length.  When nailing together – the sides overlap the bottom, front and back panels.  The front and back panels also overlap the bottom.  By nailing blocks to the  inside of the roof it can simply sit on top of the house without sliding and be conveniently lifted off when cleaning out the house.  The box should be painted and placed on blocks of 2 by 4’s to keep it off the ground.

Make sure the dog’s line is long enough to allow jumping up onto the roof.

from http://www.reshaequip.com/ 

Today was the last day of the Utah grouse season and the extended pheasant season, so I had to get out. There was a storm predicted for the afternoon, so we went up on the mountain first after ruffed grouse. It was somewhat slim pickin’s, but we had a great time. There seemed to be a lull before the storm; the weather was overcast, but calm and warm. We had one ruffed grouse flush wild out of range, but then had the dogs work up a blue grouse (dusky grouse) and had a picture-perfect flush through an open aspen stand and finished with a nice retrieve. In the early afternoon the weather turned noticeably colder, so I took the hint and left for lower country.

The extended pheasant hunt (on public lands, including the State Wildlife Management Areas) also closed today, so I thought I would see if I could get one last wild pheasant this season. By the time I got down to the WMA it was raining, which I took as a good sign. Often pheasants will be hunkered down in the rain and don’t run on you (a real problem late season on public land), and you can quietly get within range and have the dog work them up. It wasn’t to be, though. I walked for two hours in the rain and got so wet I had to wring my shotgun out. I didn’t see a bird, but still had a good time because I had the place completely to myself.

 

I had to go to a meeting up north today, but was able to slip out to the marsh late in the afternoon for a duck hunt with my brother-in-law, DJ. I hadn’t planned on going, so I didn’t have any gear, but he was able to outfit me pretty well. I did have to wear an old pair of his waders, which were 5 sizes too big for me. I felt like a clown on the long walk to the blind, but it was well worth it.  We had a great shoot with fairly steady action. The best was when a small flock of ducks were landing in a pothole several hundred yards from our position and DJ was able to blast the ducks out with an alarm call, then brought them over to us with a series of quacks and feeding chuckles. Casadore, his huge male lab did a fantistic job, as usual, on the retrieves. It made for a great evening.

 

 

Photo from Jessie’s photo album: http://www.showme.net/~tlem/Keel%20Ft.%20Drum/PhotoAlbum.htm 

Here’s what happened. Sunday, I needed a midnight snack and accidentally left 1/2 of the pumpkin pie on the kitchen table over night. When I got up in the morning, the foil cover was off and the pie plate was as clean as can be. Allie, my 2 year old lab was sleeping contentedly, sprawled out on the living room floor with a full belly.  What should you do? Come uncorked? Discipline the dog? What?

In this case the right thing to do was to do nothing at all. If I would have snatched her off the floor and disciplined her, it only would have been confusing. She would have linked the discipline with her sleeping on the floor, which she does every day.  The same exact thing applies when house training a puppy and you find a mess long after it occurred, or when in the field with a dog and it comes back after ignoring you for 30 minutes. Timing of correction is critical; keep in mind that a dog’s association period for learning is about 2 seconds long, so consequences (rewards or corrections) need to happen immediately.

What I plan on doing with Allie and her table jumping pie eating tendency is to set her up. She would never jump on the table when we are up and around; she has made that association that such an action is not acceptable. However, she has learned from Sunday’s reward that once we are in bed, such an action is acceptable. I plan on putting her e-collar on (a positive thing for her – it means we are going out to run or train and have fun) and then leaving some tasty treat on the table while we go to bed. Then I will slip outside and watch for a while through the window. The moment she jumps on the table I will hit her with the collar. If I get too cold outside before she commits the offence, I will go in put the food up and wait for another day to set her up.

The principle here is in order to properly train your dog, timing is critical; you must catch the 2 second window after the action (positive or negative). To do so later than that only confuses the dog.

 

Duck Hunting the day after Thanksgiving has become a tradition for us. The ladies go fight the crowds at the malls and we head to the marsh. This year was particularly fun. Amazingly, We had the marsh all to ourselves (we didn’t hear another shot within a mile of us).
We slept in while the ladies hit the ridiculously early sales, and then we headed out at noon. We took a couple buckets and a built temporary blind with fragmities. It was a windy afternoon, which kept the ducks flying. We had steady action all afternoon and finished with our last bird (all mallards) just minutes before the end of shooting hours. It was an awesome day.
 

We are currently working with a young (6 mo.) German shorthair pup that had essentially no human socialization. Frankly, this dog is a wreck, but there is something about her that is really loveable. She has a sweet disposition in her tail-tucked way. The owner took her on rather than seeing her put down, and we are trying to see what can be done with her. It is a real challenge because the standard things we work on don’t even enter into the equation yet. We have had to step way back and work in small baby steps. Just getting her to come out of the dog house to greet us has been a major victory. We have been using classical operant conditioning and clicker training techniques, along with lots of socialization with us, the kids and the other dogs.

 This is not an advertisement for K-9 Kondos, since I’m not getting anything out of this blog. But I have to say, I love their dog houses; I have 5 of them. I got the barrel house (K-9 Kondo) about 15 years ago and it still looks great. A couple of years ago I replaced the plywood platform on the top, otherwise it is still as good as the day I got it. More recently I have purchased 4 of their Dog Dens. They are aesthetically appealing, well insulated, weather resistant and totally chew proof. The dogs love to lie on top and hang their paws over the edge. (This is an advantage over other manufactured dog houses.) Previously, I spent a ton of time planning and building a wooden dog house which was insulated, but the dogs proceeded to chew it to chips and in no time it looked terrible. The K-9 dog houses are well priced. They keep the dogs warm in the winter, cool in the summer and always look great.

We went chukar hunting this weekend; we got a good workout, but didn’t turn up many birds for our efforts. We did flush one covey and pulled a single bird out of it before they vanished. Populations this year are lower, plus I think the lack of rain has been hard on them.