Rob Builds A Shelter For His Dogs To Crap In
October 7th, 2008

Sometimes it’s more fun and rewarding to do something yourself that you could pay someone else to do. Paying someone else means having them at your house for starters, and since I hate people, I try to avoid that scenario as often as possible. SO I dedicated this past weekend to building a brand new outdoor shelter for my dogs to crap in…allow me to explain:

Here are the two most spoiled dogs on the planet. Nellie is the white one, Shep is the perfect one.

Here is the problem. Shep and Nellie live inside the house with us at all times but obviously have to go to the bathroom outdoors. We set aside a 40 square foot area in the back corner of one side of our yard for this (because you should ALWAYS control where and when your dog goes to the bathroom…it shows dominance). But as you can see, it is uncovered, which means every winter I have to erect a pop-up tent to keep the area dry and keep the dogs from getting soaked while crapping.

This year, rather  screwing with a temporary tent and/or tarp, I decided to build a sturdy wood roofed shelter that will keep the area dry and make it easy on me (once the damn thing is built). All great ideas start with a plan…look at these mad drafting skills of mine.

One trip to Home Depot and I was ready to go.

With my wife at work, her garage became the work area for the day. I set up my sawhorses, grabbed my skillsaw and a drink and was ready. By the way kids, never mix power tools and alcohol.

And we’re off…notice the fancy Rob, Arnie and Dawn t-shirt I wear for all around-the-house chores.

Having cut, drilled and measured the initial sets of posts and boards, I placed them (without fastening) to measure angles. Obviously, I will need the roof to pitch downwards towards where I want any rain to drain.

Back to the sawing…

Here’s the fun part…all guys love climbing on roofs with power tools.

Once I had the angles perfect, I fastened the slanted portion of the roof firmly to both the fence and the flat angled roof. This thing isn’t coming down in a storm…maybe in a fire though.

The final step involved staple-gunning a tarp to the entire shelter (another guy favorite). The tarp will protect the wood and insure that no water leaks into any corner of the shelter area. The entire thing withstood its’ first test holding up perfectly through Friday’s rain storm.

The worst part of such a job is the clean-up, which is always exacerbated by tools, wood, screws, etc strewn all over the place…even the kegerator got used as a work area. How disgusting.

The final test came from the experts and Shep and Nellie love it. Apparently, Shep also loves biting Nellie’s tail while she craps…that’s new.

Wow...Nellie really loves the area. Stop crapping!

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