Wrapping Up the R&R

The major accomplishment of the R&R was to build an equipment shed to house the tractor, four-wheeler and other motorized equipment.  Though not a serious issue this time of year, during winter anything left out in the open disappears, becomes completely buried in snow.  Digging it out for use is at best inconvenient.  It's an inconvenience I no longer have to endure.

Yesterday was very restful as I enjoyed the company of house guests.  Kim Fitzgerald, founder of the Hedlund Huskie Preservation Project brought her friend Marcie Heckler up to Two Rivers from their homes in the MatSu valley to meet some dogs, meet some people and enjoy the weekend.  It was a certainly a delightful weekend for me.

Marcie and Kim are very close friends and have shared many adventures over the years, particularly adventures associated with sled dogs.  They have run sled dog tours together, worked out in the bush together, and Marcie has an especially rich history handing for Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race founder Joe Redington Sr.  While handling for Joe she spent a lot of time in the company of long distance dog mushing pioneers such as Joe Runyon, Joe Garney and Susan Butcher.  Listening to her stories was an education in many different regards.

Marcie Heckler describes life in Joe Redinton Sr.'s kennel while Kim Fitzgerald looks on.

Yesterday evening we made the hour-long drive out to Nita and Josh and their Sirius Sled Dogs kennel near the top of Murphy Dome. Nita and Josh are awash with puppies, including a new little Hedlund Husky female from Lidia and Richard Dale-Mesaros' Valley Snow Dogz kennel in Waterville, New Hampshire.  Richard escorted baby Lidia (the puppy) to Alaska, and it was our opportunity meet the gentleman and enjoy the company of some other Hedlund Husky fanciers.

Nita and Josh threw a potluck party that attracted a nice crowd of dog people.  The food was excellent, and conversation stimulating and in general it was just a great evening out and about.

Richard Dale-Mesaros (center) shares photos of his Alaska adventure with sled builder Cody Strathe while Kristen Eckwright looks on.

This morning I headed into town to do all of my normal "pre-work tour" errands.  When I returned home a light rain was falling, and I captured a very unusual photograph.  My big buddy Innoko is, for all intents and purposes, a Canadian Eskimo Dog.  He has the typical size, build, coat and attitude of that breed.  Today is only the 2nd time in his entire life, including during temperatures well less than 50-below, that I've ever seen him engage in this particular behavior.

Innoko captured INSIDE his house - very rare for this dog.

As I've noted before, once I return to work tomorrow I won't have access to high speed Internet service to keep my blog up to date.  I won't disappear forever, but it will likely be a couple of weeks before you hear or read from me again.  Don't worry, I WILL return.

Swanny

Back to Normal

I spent most of the day doing relatively small tasks associated with the big project of building the shed.  For example, I needed to realign the east kennel perimeter fence, installing an equipment / vehicle access gate at the same time.  I needed to move the dog yard tool shed, and I needed to tidy things up a bit around the shed to make the space useable. 

It took most of the day to accomplish those tasks, but in part because I got a late start.  I actually slept in until about 7:30 this morning, so didn't get started until around 10:00.  Here are some photographs that show the new layout pretty well.

Photographed from the deck, you can see that the new perimeter fence has both a large equipment gate, and a smaller 'manway' gate for easy access to the dog yard.

A view looking up the driveway shows the equipment gate and the fence tied into a corner of a small storage building tacked onto the side of the garage.

Although a bit of a tight fit, there is plenty of room to get the truck in and out of the dog yard.

 After kennel chores and my own supper I fired up the lawn mower and cut the yard.  That task has been neglected and, with company coming tomorrow evening, I really wanted the place to look like someone actually cares about it.  That's because I actually do care about it. 

Tomorrow I need to make yet another trip to town, to stock up on dog food, replace a garden hose that one of the dogs chewed up (my own fault) and pick up some incidentals.  With only three more days of R&R left, I'm looking forward to a somewhat less demanding and hopefully more restful schedule.

Mission Accomplished

I finished roofing the new equipment shed this evening.  It's about as simple as a shed can be, but it should serve the purpose of protecting the tractor, four-wheeler and other motorized equipment from the weather.  When finances permit it will be easy duty to remove the blue tarp and replace it with something more attractive and substantial.  Meanwhile, though, here it is - a prime example of good old-fashioned Alaskan backwoods architecture, engineering and construction.

As seen from the deck.

There are still some incidental tasks to be done.  Now I'll realign the kennel fence to restore the "truck gate", a gate on this end of the kennel I can use to access the dog yard with the truck, tractor or other equipment.  That big steel cabinet you see off the end of the shed will go to the other end of the shed, backed up against it and seated on concrete blocks to elevate it just a bit.  I use that steel cabinet for safely storing flammable fuels. 

The dog yard tool shed you can see in the last picture beyond the equipment shed will be moved to the back of the garage, near a manway door where it will continue to store extra hardware, feeding pans and of course the ever necessary scooping tools. 

That should be enough stuff to keep me steadily busy over the next day or two, along with some guests I'm expecting this weekend.  I'll write more about them afterward.

Starting to look like something

Yesterday was a wet, rainy, kind of yucky day, perfect for running into town for some materials.  I got three 20 foot long pressure treated 2X6s, which span the entire length of the new equipment shed.  I also picked up 3 pressure treated 4 X 4 posts for center supports.  The trip to town was just about all that got done, though.  Did I mention it was a rainy, kind of yucky day?

Today I made up for lost time, and now this thing is starting to look like something useful. The first task was to get those 2X6's in place, working single handed.  How does that happen?  With some horsepower and hydraulics, of course.

Horsepower and hydraulics hold roof joist in place for fastening

The three center posts were a bit tricky, but I sorted it out.  I put the two on the ends on good stout concrete blocks, and just tacked them into place with scrap lumber to brace them into position temporarily.  For the center post, I grabbed the manual post hole digger and planted it good and deep.  Then I used the tractor to hoist the joist, fastened it into place, and the difficult stuff was done.

Now it's just a matter of nailing rafters into place.  For now I'm just using black spruce poles, the result of a couple of different tree thinning and land clearing projects over the past couple of years.  I'll cover that with a blue tarp and call it good enough for this year, because the budget just won't cover a nice metal roof for the thing yet.  That can come later when the finances are more favorable, or when I find used materials for a cheap price. 

Meanwhile, here's the progress I made today.  By tomorrow I hope to have it covered.  If so, then no later than Friday I'll reconfigure the kennel perimeter fence, install a new truck gate into the kennel, and I can then declare the project....  well, I'm not going to say it yet.

Starting to look like a real shed

Posts in the Air

My spare chainsaw, though smaller and less powerful than the other, has more aggressive teeth and I actually made reasonable progress cutting posts.  That gave me a chance to get my new shed  back on track today.  I have all six heavy posts in place, each set in concrete.  I parked the tractor and my little care inside to get them out of the way, and to show about how much room this shed will provide once it's finished.  Certainly not huge, but large enough for its purpose.

Posts in the air, ready for the next step.

Adapt, Improvise and Overcome

One thing you can always count on around a dog mushing kennel is that NOTHING will ever go quite as planned. 

Well, almost nothing.  Yesterday everything pretty much went as planned.  I got my errands finished, got my BATF compliance inspection completed, and all that sort of thing.  Meanwhile, I was also notified that an "angry" grizzly bear sow has been seen in the neighborhood.  I helped get the word out to my neighbors to keep eyes open, try to give her as much space as possible, and so forth.  While working outside I've been wearing a high caliber, center fire pistol on my hip just to be on the safe side.

My friend Trish brought her two pet dogs over for me to 'babysit' while she is working.  She has a very busy weekend and 2 more dogs really isn't a big deal around here, usually.  Last night I put Maggie and Shadow into the isolation pen along the east side of the yard.  Then Trish and I were talking with Jeff when both dogs came dashing past, off to play run amok in the front yard, harass the chickens, dash in and out of the woods and so forth.  I went to the pen and found the gate still closed and latched, and no signs of an escape tunnel.

They apparently climbed the fence.  I'm not surprised that Maggie could do that as she is in excellent physical condition, but Shadow is very overweight, so I'm rather amazed that she was able to duplicate the younger the more athletic dog's effort.  I put them out on posts and hadn't been away from the yard more than 5 minutes when I heard all of the dogs "going off".  I grabbed a shotgun to check things out, and it seems that young Capella had watched the other dogs make their escape, and decided she could do the same thing.  I ended up putting her in a different pen that I've already covered with wire fencing to prevent such airborne antics.  I was starting to think my dogs were turning into monkeys.

Today's goal was to get the site for the new pole barn prepared, and get posts cut to length and ready to plant.  While working on the site I realized there is more of a grade in that location than I had previously understood, so I drove up to Pleasant Valley Equipment to rent a laser level to see just how much grade there is.  Between the highest spot and lowest spot there is a 17 1/2 inch difference in elevation, so it proved to be a good investment.  It's important to me that the roof line be level and the pitch accurate.  I only want to have to build this thing once in my lifetime.

Surveying the locations for the posts was very basic stuff.  I picked the location for the first post and used a tape measure and high quality magnetic compass to lay out the rest of the site, then double checked by measuring the diagonal between corners.  It took a couple of tries to get everything just right, but everything is indeed just right.

Next was cutting the abandoned utility poles I plan to use as corner posts to length, and that's when things started going not quite as planned.  How hard can it be to make a cut through 12 inches of wood with a chain saw?  HOLY COW.  I've NEVER had so much difficulty cutting rounds with a chain saw before.  I had to resharpen the chain several times just to get four posts cut to length. 

That's not the worse of it.  I mounted the auger on the tractor, drilled out the first hole, grabbed shovels and a manual post hole digger to clean and clear and widen - and it turns out I'm not able to dig the four-foot deep holes I had planned on.  Consequently, all of that work with the chain saw needs to be duplicated to get these damned things the proper height. 

I'm probably going to leave this first one extra tall, and perhaps mount a yard light on it for some extra illumination in the kennel.  All of the others are going to require more chain saw work, though.  Not tonight, though.  I've had enough of this stuff for one day.  I'll deal with it tomorrow instead.

The site for the pole shed surveyed, and first post set into place.

2nd Summer Project in Motion

I got home from work Monday night, thanks to my counterpart who was able to come to work early.  That gave me an early start on the 2nd major project of the summer - building a pole barn in which to store motorized equipment out of the weather.

It has been a bit of a hectic couple of days.  In addition to working on this project I've had to deal with some other issues.  One of those was a meeting regarding proposed standards of animal care regulations being written by the State Veterinarian's Office of the Alaska Department of Environmental Conservation.  You can read about my input in that meeting in today's issue of the Fairbanks Daily News Miner.  So much for my most recent foray into the sewage pit that passes for modern politics and bureaucracy.

Back to the fun stuff.  The first step in my new equipment shed was to clear the site.  This shed is going to be situated along the west perimeter of the dog yard, as it will be convenient to the house so machines can be easily warmed during cold weather.  It does need to be far enough from the house to ensure that snow sloughing from the roof doesn't bury a corner of the shed or make the passageway to the dog yard impassible.  It will probably be easier to show you the new layout as the project progresses.

Here is what I had to start with:

In the beginning there were weeds, equipment and stuff in the way.

Working single handed, it was easy enough to deal with the weeds, old moldy straw and other stuff blocking access to the site, but that shed was more of a problem.  I had originally planned to just tear and down as it is quite old and isn't particularly necessary anymore.  On the other hand, each handler I've had on the property has needed additional covered storage space.  When Jeff offered to move it up to the cabin for his use, I agreed but there was a caveat.  It HAD to be moved by this evening, or I was going to do whatever I felt necessary to get my site ready.

So, here is what things looked like this morning:

The shed on blocks, ready to move.

 Jeff rented a Case 621B loader with extended pallet forks to move the shed.  That was by far more efficient than any other scheme we had considered.  It took less than 2 hours to pick up the machine, move the shed, and then return to machine to the equipment rental shop.

The fate of the shed was literally up in the air.

Given that the shed has been standing for well over a decade on a wooden frame work elevated on concrete blocks, and nothing else for a foundation, it held up surprisingly well through the move. 

The shed on the trail

It took some finesse, but Jeff got the sled in place behind the cabin without breaking anything major.  Meanwhile, it didn't take very long at all for me to fill in a couple of holes left behind using the little tractor and bucket.  As of this evening, the site for the new pole barn is just about ready to survey the job.

Location of new pole barn ready to survey

Tomorrow I have to do several errands in town, and then host the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives compliance offer as part of the process of renewing my black powder dealer's license.  I doubt I'll have time to work on this project further until Saturday.  With a bit of luck and perseverence, I'm hoping that by Saturday night I'll have the site fully prepped, the posts cut to length and moved into position near the job site, and maybe even be ready to start digging holes for those posts.

Until then, there are other tasks to keep me occupied.

Mission Accomplished

When I came home from work Tuesday before last, I knew I'd have to push myself hard to accomplish my 2012 kennel renovation project before the end of the R&R, especially with a couple of days off the project for the Alyeska surplus auction.  I just finished that project about an hour ago, just on time and well under budget.

Followers of this blog have been treated to basically a blow by blow account of the project, so I won't repeat that.  Instead, I'll just explain the layout of the yard now, and why I think it represents a huge improvement over the earlier layout.

First, two photographs taken from the deck which overlooks the dog yard.  All of the pens have been repositioned to take best advantage of the available shade and to create a wall of chain link between the yard and the heavily wooded area north of the house.  This not only helps confine the dogs and also protects them from moose, porcupines, bears, wolves or other wildlife or even stray dogs that may come wandering about.

By carefully measuring to ensure every chain for our swivel & post tethering systems is exactly 6 feet long from post to snap swivel, I was able to ensure that each tethered dog has at least 113 square feet of available space, yet we gained an additional three circles in that part of the yard, giving more options for confining dogs, especially those that don't get along well with a pen mate.  With the combination of pens and tethers, we can now comfortably house up to 22 dogs in the yard.  Our current population is 17.

Housing area as seen from the deck overlooking the yard

Open play and training area as seen from the deck overlooking the yard

The dog yard is easily accessible through a manway door in the back of the attached garage.  By hanging some fencing and making a gate, we can maintain the integrity of the perimeter fence while providing easy access to the northern part of the yard with the tractor or other equipment, making maintenance more convenient.  The northern row of tether posts are spaced so that there is a bit of room between the pens and the tethered dogs where one can set a bucket or open a gate without the interference of an excited dog.

Northwest entrance to the dog yard

Each chain in our tether system is now 6 feet long, from the post to the snap swivel that attaches to the dog's collar.  By spacing the two rows of posts 14 feet apart, the dogs can freely interact with each other, yet easily disengage if the interaction turns sour.  Galvanized wash tubs are provided in each pen and in between each pair of dogs in the tether area to ensure everyone has plenty of fresh water during these hot summer days.

Chinook is watching Selene and enjoying the view down the alley between the two rows of post/swivel tethers.

Be installing a pen by itself in the east side of the yard, we create an isolation pen that can be used to sequester a bitch in season, an ill or injured dog, a litter of puppies, or a dog that's new to the kennel and just being introduced to his or her new team mates.  Currently Midnight's Son is living in that pen to take advantage of the morning shade.

Midnight's Son in the isolation pen

One of the important goals of this project was to create more open space in which dogs can run free and play 'run amok' together when we are available to supervise.  In this new configuration, more than 1/2 of the 7100 square foot dog yard is available for dogs to run and frolic without interfering with those still on tethers.

View from the southeast corner of the yard shows the play area and deck overlooking the yard

In the photo above, you can just make out the "truck gate" to the left of the storage building.  The truck gate is wide enough for me to pull the dog truck into the yard for loading and unloading.  The photo below shows the new configuration of the yard from that gate.

View of the yard from the truck gate.

So far, I'm very pleased with the new layout.  I've achieved the goals to taking better advantage of the available shade, creating more space in the free play area, adding an isolation pen AND adding some more housing units.  The dogs seem to be pleased as well.  In the past when I've made changes in the yard the dogs have acted unsettled for up to a couple of weeks.  This time around their behavior hasn't changed at all that I've noticed.  Well, except for Innoko.  He's acting much more mellow toward his team mates.