Getting ready for Turkey Week
With the holidays approaching, we have been trying to expand our kennel operations a bit so that we can take advantage of this peak boarding season.
I've already have mentioned that we ordered additional kennels. They shipped Tuesday!!!! Next week Mom and Dad are going to come up for a visit, and we'll spend Thursday installing them.
We already have reservations for TG week exceeding the number of kennels we currently have (31 dogs so far, and the overflow traffic is just starting to come our way) ... so I'm somewhat holding my breath that nothing disasterous happens that prevents us having at least some of the kennel installed in time.
We're also getting a cross fence up so that we have two large yards... A week ago Dave and I headed out to make some progress on the remaining posts, and were incredibly pleased to discover that our recent snow managed to make digging holes way easier than ever before! That day we got 14 holes in and 8 posts up, and we finished the remainder the next day. Pretty much a record for us. Dave and Ginger had only 3 dogs on Tuesday, so they started putting up the wire. Yesterday, however, they had 12 dogs, so they had their hands full.
Ya know, we THINK we can get work done while keeping an eye on the dogs, but that is just an increasingly false assumption. We can't have the dogs out while digging the holes because the dogs are incontrollably curious about what we are doing and while we're operting the tractor and auger, we can't have that. But we thought we could have dogs out while we were setting posts. Well, could -- except we were amazed at how frequently dogs fell into these 10 inch diameter holes!!! One samoyed, in particular, TWICE fell with both back feet into a hole and got totally stuck. Huuummm? Fortunately all of our dogs were physically too large to actually go down in. But the balls and toys? CONSTANTLY were being dropped in - usually the hole we were working with.
Our other new news -- the day care business has picked up quite a bit. The 12 dogs yesterday were ALL daycare. In fact, from Monday through Thursday this week -- we actually don't have ANY boarding dogs! First time in a very long time. It sure is nice not to have to go out at 8:00 pm to let them out again, and not to have to do letout and breakfasts before 7 am! I tell you, this day care business is the way to go.
Finally, we've also been making progress on the barn bathroom -- the one that technically was supposed to be in place by summer camp 2005? And then summer camp 2006? We actually had the septic in and rough plumbing and the concrete pad poured by May this year, but that's as far as we got.
Now.. we got walls and a ceiling!
Insulation and heat may go in this weekend since I think the weather may be too wet to work on the fence. But once we're assured the water supply won't freeze, then I'm sure we'll have no choice but to put all energies into the kennel until after TG.
I've already have mentioned that we ordered additional kennels. They shipped Tuesday!!!! Next week Mom and Dad are going to come up for a visit, and we'll spend Thursday installing them.
We already have reservations for TG week exceeding the number of kennels we currently have (31 dogs so far, and the overflow traffic is just starting to come our way) ... so I'm somewhat holding my breath that nothing disasterous happens that prevents us having at least some of the kennel installed in time.
We're also getting a cross fence up so that we have two large yards... A week ago Dave and I headed out to make some progress on the remaining posts, and were incredibly pleased to discover that our recent snow managed to make digging holes way easier than ever before! That day we got 14 holes in and 8 posts up, and we finished the remainder the next day. Pretty much a record for us. Dave and Ginger had only 3 dogs on Tuesday, so they started putting up the wire. Yesterday, however, they had 12 dogs, so they had their hands full.
Ya know, we THINK we can get work done while keeping an eye on the dogs, but that is just an increasingly false assumption. We can't have the dogs out while digging the holes because the dogs are incontrollably curious about what we are doing and while we're operting the tractor and auger, we can't have that. But we thought we could have dogs out while we were setting posts. Well, could -- except we were amazed at how frequently dogs fell into these 10 inch diameter holes!!! One samoyed, in particular, TWICE fell with both back feet into a hole and got totally stuck. Huuummm? Fortunately all of our dogs were physically too large to actually go down in. But the balls and toys? CONSTANTLY were being dropped in - usually the hole we were working with.
Our other new news -- the day care business has picked up quite a bit. The 12 dogs yesterday were ALL daycare. In fact, from Monday through Thursday this week -- we actually don't have ANY boarding dogs! First time in a very long time. It sure is nice not to have to go out at 8:00 pm to let them out again, and not to have to do letout and breakfasts before 7 am! I tell you, this day care business is the way to go.
Finally, we've also been making progress on the barn bathroom -- the one that technically was supposed to be in place by summer camp 2005? And then summer camp 2006? We actually had the septic in and rough plumbing and the concrete pad poured by May this year, but that's as far as we got.
Now.. we got walls and a ceiling!
Insulation and heat may go in this weekend since I think the weather may be too wet to work on the fence. But once we're assured the water supply won't freeze, then I'm sure we'll have no choice but to put all energies into the kennel until after TG.
Labels: Ranch
posted by Monica at Sun Pony |
10:35 AM
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