Our pristine property is changing.
We’re installing a picket fence.
A cornered off section of yard where…
little girls…
…and rambunctious dog can run and play untethered.
Poor Solha has been nearly constantly on the leash since arriving in Virginia.
We can’t trust her yet to stay close and out of the road.
She can easily jump this fence, of course.
But both of us agree that as long as she feels safe, secure and supervised, she’ll stick around.
In typical Jake fashion, the fence was built in less than 24 hours. All that remains are the gates.
Solha and June should have a finished play space by this afternoon.
{ 14 comments… read them below or add one }
Wow, 24 hours! How did he put in those posts? I don’t see dirt around them so they must have been pounded in. So that would mean the posts had pointy ends? Sorry about so many questions. Our fence holds back cattle and goats so the posts are a little different. Just curious about other processes for a new fence idea at my mom’s house.
I loved your book! Have recommended it to all my reader friends and family!
Oh, man, please do! I don’t have a big publicity machine behind me so every recommendation helps! Thanks, Sara!
Good grief, that’s some fast fence-building!
He must be a fence building wizard!
My dog jumps our four foot fence to run off with neighbor dogs. We try to keep an eye on her, but even safe, secure, and supervised, she will still go. I hope you have better luck with Solha. I live in a neighborhood and she always comes home, if that helps any.
The fence looks great. Let’s hope they both love it!
Beautiful fence! And grounds look lovely and green!
Looks GREAT Jake!!!!
Those pictures of June are precious. Especially the one of her reaching up to Jake.
pretty fence! i like that there is space between the slats.
if you put an invisible fence just inside it, then it will encourage Solha to stay in.
I would definitely second the suggestion of invisible fencing. Soulha with her penchant for houdini antics will probably clear that fence in a single bound.. just when your back is turned for a second. Invisible fencing will slow her roll keeping her inside the perimeter of the fence. I had it installed on a 3 acre property when I had a dalmatian and it worked really well for him. The installer said that in all their experience.. only a couple of dogs had ever totally bucked the system. I imagine that if you ran it in conjunction with the fencing, it would be really hard for the dog to test the boundaries.
I also strongly endorse the invisible fence idea. But have it professionally installed by the people who actually include TRAINING in their fee. You can buy fencing in a box and install it yourself, but without the training I’m betting a dog like Solha will just be laughing as she disappears from sight.
My brother had a dog that could not be contained. Several times he got out of a locked house and was just waiting on the front porch when they got home.
You have an amazing husband, and a perfectionist at that. What a fence builder. And June can now run around without worry of wandering off. I’ve been reading passages of your book to my husband. We particularly related to all the junk that comes onto the property that our husbands then upcycle and put to good use – like chicken tractors.
Our dog has a containment collar with a base unit which is like an invisible fence but there is no digging or wires, and it’s portable. You can take it anywhere and set it to as small or large of a radius as you’d like, up to about 30 feet. You put the base unit in the house (or shed) and the dog wears a collar that will beep if he/she nears the edge of the perimeter and will then shock at a preset degree if she/he continues past the perimeter. Hope you had a great weekend! Such lovely weather!
That is a nice fence but I wouldn’t count on it for Solha containment!