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Protecting your dog that protects your tractor

T

Texasmark1

Well-known Member
Monday night we are going down to 10 degrees. The dog is an Australian Dingo and has a good amount of guard hair. On cold mornings, say 40ish she may be lying out in the yard rather than occupying her house.

The house, which I designed and built, faces south and is insulated with 3" of house insulation in the walls with a plywood facia...didn't want metal walls facing the interior to assist in her keeping warm. The floor is plywood also and a 2x4 on end height off the ground. The porch is just high enough for her to clear it which I did deliberately to increase the available weather protection. I scattered a bale of hay in there a month ago which she has pretty much left alone.

In the past I have had carpeting on the floor which was torn out and had a heating pad like a person would use on low and that was torn out.

The dog has to stay in the pen.

Open for suggestions how I could provide a small measure of heat in there that would not run her out and that she wouldn't chew up.

Thanks,
Mark
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A portion of a bale of straw every week does wonders. Our dogs have survived my entire life using this method. Making a lip on the doghouse door helps keep the straw in also.
 
Looks like a big house for a small dog ?

I make them just big enough for them to get in and curl up in. Just had scraps of flake board for the last one. No insulation. Put straw in there and some cedar chips too. In Ohio and it gets pretty cold here. Our dog now ( blue heeler ) has been out for 11 years and still going. She doesn't usually go in the house until it gets around freezing temps either. Nany times just curls up in a hole she dug in the yard even in the rain.
 
Central Iowa will have highs in the single digits for weeks at a time. Not uncommon for our dogs to spend the night in the round bale stacks when its well below zero with a stiff wind howling out of the North. She'll be fine, I wouldn't worry at all.

Nate
 

Thanks for the reply. I originally built it for 2 dogs, both of which have gone on due to old age.

Mark
 

Thanks Nate. That really helps. Guarantee you that anything I would have put in there would have worried me more than her being able to stay warm.

Mark
 
Might be more than you want to do, but a friend here had a radiant slab cast under his doghouse, fed from his house boiler. I didn"t ask if it was a separate zone with thermostat. Dogs stayed toasty.
 
Put a flap of carpet in the door way. Leave space both sides and bottom. Fill under the house with slack coal. frost/cold will not penetrate coal.
 
They will keep the house warm enough by themselves if it is just big enough, insulated and out of the wind.
 
a 25 watt lite buld in a wire cage , and hang it from the top of the celing in the doghouse will keep it nice and warm in there , a 25 watt buld uses pennies a day and he's certainly worth that
 
sounds like a little straw and it"ll be fine,..once had a shepard that loved to roll in the snow when it was below zero
 
Our large dog - 60# - lives outside. He'll stay out in all but the most brutal weather. Try to keep a layer of straw in his wooden doghouse. We had looked at one of those plastic igloo things that TSC. They have no insulation, sidewalls and floor just a layer of plastic - less than 1/4 inch thick. No provision for a door. Far over priced at $150.00! Decided dog would do better with his wooden house with 3 inch sides, roof. I'd tack a carpet square over the door if I thought the dumb dog could figure out how to get in and out!
 
Mark,
Used to have a German Shepard that rolled in the snow til it was about 0F outside. The house we built for him, the door was approximately a foot above the ground. This would allow 12" of straw for bedding.

Never had a problem with the dog getting cold, I crawled in there a time or two and it was pretty warm. Don't ask how I fit!!! Was a little tight through the opening.

This is mid-Michigan.

Rick
 
I would put down 3 1/2 inches of fiberglass on the floor. Then a heating pad. Cover pad with thin tin screwed down at corners and missing the wires. The heat will go through the tin. Tin will prevent dog from chewing pad. Then put a blanket or some kind of pad on top of tin.

I have something similar for cat. Check to make sure bedding isn't too warm.
 
Cold won"t bother him as long as he has shelter. Don"t bother with insulation or a heater; leaves, hay, or straw for a bed is plenty.

In my experience anything fabric will be torn up (I won"t mention the old feather comforter I thought my stupid dogs would appreciate as a bed).
 
Got some great replies. Obvious we are talking about man and
woman't best friend. Looks like I have her covered; straw floor,
off the ground, no drafts, insulation and wood between her and
the metal sides, out of the wind, plenty of free choice food, may
(probably will add some canned that day) keep the water thawed.

BD on the house construction, I wanted it warm and dry and a
place to get in out of the rain for the dog(s) and the feed. Was
fun building it. The roof lifts up on the N side so in the summer,
I lift it up and put a 2x4 under the lid and she has natural and
forced convection cooling the latter compliments of mother
nature. Besides the leaves from the tree (whose trunk you see)
completely cover her 40'x40' pen in the summer. Don't know
what I'll do when that fruitless mulberry dies. It's over 30 now.

Thanks again all,
Mark
 
Year's ago we had a black lab that would lay on the west side of the house at night below our bedroom window no matter how cold or how much it snowed. We would wake up if snowing and she would be covered in snow. She had a wonderful place in the barn to sleep, but would only go there if it got below 0 with a strong wind. In fact I only saw her in there a couple times. Was the most obedient dog I ever had.
 
I bought my yellow lab 3 new dog beds,but I slept on them in bed for 3 or4 nites before I gave them to the dog,she never tore any of them up!
 
Cut a piece of carpet a tad narrower than the opening . Cat the length soit just touches the ground or florr outside the house. Now when you first install it, tack in on the house so there is about 9 inches of space at the bottom. After the dog is going in and out OK, drop it down four inches. And then All the way when he has mastered that.
 
I put a 60 watt light bulb in the insulated house for our doxie. He was very comfortable, but one night he woke us up in the middle of the night with his barking. It turned out that the bulb had burned out. As soon as I put in a new bulb, he went into the dog house, curled up and went back to sleep. He was a great communicator.
 
Wow! How in the world did you get a Dingo into this country. Has it made a good pet? For those of you who don't know what a Dingo is..google it.
 
When I was into coon hunting I had three Black and Tan dogs. Each had a wooden whisky barrel with a door way cut in the end with a burlap bag over the door opening. I kept clean straw in side. The were chained with a 10 foot chain like most of the coon hunters around here. Black and Tans are a short haired dog and they slept out side the barrel house more than in when it was cold. Wind and snow or heavy rain would cause them to go inside. They never acted cold. I fed them almost free choice which kept them on the heavy side for that breed. Most of the time they still had food when I fed them. Had long haired house dogs that shivered when you let them out to pee. We baby our poodle so bad that he acts cold in the house when it is cold in the winter. However he goes with me to do chores every morning and night year around and will stay out playing in the show drifts as long as I am out and shows no sign of being cold other than taking turns of holding one back foot up while running in real cold snow. He still is in no hurry to go inside. I think our dogs discomfort in the winter lays in our minds more than how it affects our dogs as long as they have body fat.
 
I wired my dog"s house with two shielded haymow light fixtures. I tried low wattage bulbs in it, but sometimes it was too warm for my Border Collie, and I found that the bulbs burned out fairly quickly. Then I changed the wiring to put the two lights in series. With two 60 watt bulbs in the modified system, the well insulated dog house was always comfortably warm, yet not hot, and the bulbs lasted for a couple of years.

Sadly, my Border Collie died in June...she was almost 15 and the last year had not been really good for her. I sure do miss her, but am not ready for another dog yet. She was a DANDY!
 
i put small square corn fodder bales around our dog house that the cats use.
this year i put bales in contractor trash bags.
i hope to keep bales dry and hopefully some of the wind off of the dog house.
i have cedar wood shaving inside so the cats can burrow down.
my bum dogs stay in the house about the other thing they do good is eat,bark and bum rides in with me in the truck.
i can't leave truck door open when they are outside or they will be in the truck waiting for me they seem to be saying well come on i'm waiting what is taking you so long.
 
Used a light bulb for years when we had beagles. I recommend it. We also wired the water bowl to the opposite side of the inside of the dog house and the water bowl would not freeze then.
 

Our beagle slept in an uninsulated house with a flap on the door every night every year for about fifteen years, in northern NH. well below zero some nights. If you let nature take it's course they will build up a heavy coat, and as others have said, they need protection only from the wind.
 
Nice dog house, looks better than some houses I pass going
into town. I got some 6" wide strips of plastic like they use in
refrigerated warehouses, overlapped them 1" & bolted them to
a strip of angle iron. They are 2" wider than the door and hang
2" below the threshold. I hang that over the doorway when it's
cold, when it warms up I just take it off. Dog learned to go in &
out of the door really quickly with the help of a couple treats.
 
Australian singer Slim Dusty has song's about dingo's.Also good truckin songs about the out back. Check it out on you tube.
 
May not look like it but the dog weighs over 60#. Never been in the house. Likes to play. Has long "fingernails" as she won't let us do it and the last time we took her to the "beauty shop" to see if they could do it, it took 3 operators together to get it done....sorta.

Then there are the muddy feet. And then there is the Boston Terrier house dog and they both love to romp.

That's a few of the reasons.

But the thought did cross my mind.......just briefly. Grin

Mark
 
I put a bale of costal in my dog's house (Lab mix, mostly lab). It has insullated walls and floor. He hates being kept in the house or the shop. On a cold morning all you can see is his nose stickiing out of the hay. Temp is dropping like a rock right now. Just hope we don't get ice in the trees.
 
Had a stray that happened to be an Italian long white haired dog, forget the name....picture of it and many others in a dog ID poster hanging on the wall at the vets. He was a great friend for half a dozen or so years and I started feeding him rawhide treats with chicken strips wrapped around them....won't say where they came from as I raised xxxx with the retailer who ignored me totally, found 11 www pages of similar folks with dead dogs. Anyway what was once a youthful healthy dog within the matter of a week just pooped out. The vet did a blood test and numerous vital organs just shut down. Don't feed those things to dogs any longer and read the labels on the food I do use.

Had the vet put him down and upon leaving went to the county "dog detention center" aka animal shelter, to get another. Just happened to see this gal and love at first sight. Per the species, she demands attention. Didn't know that but that's ok. Didn't know what she was when I bought her. Seems the spots are Australian Shepherd so I guess she is a half breed. She was spayed, all shots current and a bargain at $75.

Mark
 
Thanks. Had a house with a door at one end and no porch or anything to keep the feed dry and keep the water out of the house. Plus I felt that on rainy days it would be nice for the dog to be able to lie down on something besides wet ground. I made the porch roof low to assist in keeping the rain out. She likes to sleep in the corner of the pen closest to the back door of my house but when the weather gets bad she will go inside. She does hate water and I have not been able to give her a bath since obtaining her about 2 1/2 years ago.

Mark
 
Australian Dingo's can not be exported from Australia nor can they be imported into this country. That's why I questioned how you got it.
 
Thats where my dog sleeps.He has a dog bed and a soft mat he favors in warm weather.He wakes me early am to go out.He sits on the couch and likes to watch TV..
 
We are scheduled for up to 1/2". I have over 160 cedars besides a couple dozen Hackberry and two Live Oaks. The cedars take ice really hard as do the Live Oaks. Ice is devastating to me. At least the power company has finally come to it's senses and spent tons of $$$ in cutting the trees away from the power lines so we don't have to go for a week or so, as we used to, without power.

Mark
 
Lot's of ideas here, mostly insulation of some sort. And a few lightbulbs. I did my lights a little different. Having dogs that like to mess with stuff made putting lights in the house a bad idea if they were visible. I took a metal coffee can, cut a hole in the top of the house the same diameter of the can. Took the open end of the can and flaired about an inch of it, cutting notches and folded them against the house and attached it with rivets. All the dog could see inside was the bottom of the can. I put a porcelain light fixture inside and covered the opening with a metal pie pan on top with a couple of large headed screws. A 60 watt bulb heats the can up nicely and keeps the inside of the house above freezing in ten degree weather and any dog I have had doesn't get blinded by the light all the time.
 
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