From Forest to Playfield: A Simple, Rustic Fence for Our Puppies

Our posts are a tiny bit over the place, and maybe you just came here looking for more information on the pups and the 2nd litter – I promise there will be more information (we lost a bit of content because of hardware failure :( ) and updates coming soon, but because I am rather proud of this – here a blog post (and even in VLOG form) about my fence creation to enhance the puppies playfield!

Now, originally when the pups were a little bit younger we wanted to have them nearby.

We then “build” a barrier (it was a bit like playing Tetris, haha) out of our garden table, boxes, and pretty much anything else we had flying around.

But that was neither aesthetically pleasing and also lackluster in providing the pups with maybe a bit better curiosity stimulation.

Our research in what we could buy to enhance their play area, were either completely over budget, too cheap in quality, too plasticy, too generic, or simply not suitable.

Personally I love improvising for those kind of projects and when going through the garage and the garden, I stumbled across the sticks and wood I collected the last year (for another project I never found the time to follow up on it :P).

The pups got super excited about sticks in general (I think we might share some genes there with the dogs – who doesn’t get excited about a good stick!), and the idea was born to build a fence using those materials myself.

What started as a basic idea and should have not taken me more then 2h, developed into a brainstorming obsession on how to do it best!

Yes, I am not too experienced with crafting and handyman work so obviously that took longer then another person, haha.

However thinking of it was a lot of fun! 

How do I fixate it on either side? How do I make it as least intrusive as possible? How do I do it with a budget in mind? How will it be stable enough? Is it possible to make it modular to fit our needs and requirements with the development of the pups? How do I make sure its functionality is intact, but at the same time fits our backyard?

I think I managed to find a solution to all of those questions, and I am most pleased to inform that this project was taken from the beginning to the end!

I do not think explaining how I did it in the end is needed – the pictures are self explanatory.

However maybe some additional advice or things I learned along the way to point out:

• When using Akku screwers and your drilling with them. Make sure to use it on high torque so machine does not get damaged when getting stuck.
• It makes life a lot easier if you pre-drill through the sticks, before using nails or screws to fixate them.
• I lost a lot of time switching between wooden drill and the screw bit. Realized a bit too late that pre-drilling and then using nails would have gone way better as a workflow.
• Nails are also better as they go deeper into the wood ont he surface. Some of the screws are more on the surface and I need to observer, if the pups won’t try to choose on them (I will deepen them then if needed).

Of course it took Miss Blue exactly 3seconds to find the gap in the fence big enough to squeeze through and lead all other puppies to the well deserved freedom!

NO FENCE SHALL HOLD US! FOLLOW ME!

Very much to my dismay as I tried to contain them for a moment so I can clean and do some maintenance in the garden, haha.