The Putnam Scoop

I’d like you to meet my dog Pepper. Living with Pepper has been interesting, to say the least.  I first met Pepper when I was volunteering at our local animal shelter as a dog walker. I called him Otto because he reminded me of an ottoman, long and low. He’s a Border Collie/Basset Hound mix, with a big dog body on very short, sturdy legs. While I knew that walking the dogs, photographing them and putting their information online was helping, I didn’t feel like it was “enough”. I wanted to SAVE somebody.

It couldn’t be just any dog. I needed one that was gentle enough not to hurt the older dog I already had. I have cats, so that would have to be considered, too. He needed to love people. He needed to be HOUSETRAINED. I knew Pepper had a great personality, and when the shelter workers told me that he’d let himself out of his cage when he had to go to the bathroom, I knew he was very well housetrained, too. What I didn’t think about was what a challenge such a smart dog can be.

Pepper was in the animal shelter for a reason. He’s a Houdini Dog. Perhaps you have one or you know one. Pepper knows how to open gates and go under fences. When Pepper gets the urge to run free, it’s hard to contain him. I have had to become an expert on dog containment.

Keeping him from opening the gates was easy enough, we just added locks. Keeping him from going under the fence was a bigger challenge. I did a little research online and learned that there are several things you can do.

• One is burying the fence a few inches underground during installation. That would have been great, but our fence is already in.
• Another was pouring a little trench of cement under the fence. If Pepper were digging his way out, this would work. However, Pepper knows that the chain-link fence will FLEX, and all he has to do is stick his nose under it and PUSH.

Eventually I found ground stakes from Best Friend Fence. These stakes have a curved top (to catch the bottom of the chain link fence) with a flat surface, making it easy to hammer them into the ground. The length of the stake is a zig-zag “lightning” shape that keeps the stake firmly in the ground. You can see one in the photo at left, and just behind it are the tops of two that have been hammered into the ground. (Sorry about the leaves, this is West Virginia after all.) They were easy to hammer into the ground but seem to be holding very well. They have passed the very difficult “Pepper Test” with flying colors. They were affordable, well made and easy to use, so they pass my test as well.

If you have a Houdini Dog of your own, I can recommend these stakes from experience.

This entry was posted on Sunday, November 11th, 2007 at 7:50 pm and is filed under Dogs. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.