Fancy New Dog Potty Yard

The new dog yard is finished! We plan to eventually build a large deck on this side of the house, so we wanted to choose fencing materials that would be complimentary to a cedar deck design. So, we used tight-knot cedar 4×4 posts, and cedar 2×4 rails.  We did not get these at the “big box” store- these came from a local lumber yard, and the wood is beautiful, nearly flawless, and straight (but was also expensive!).

On the inside, we used a variation of “hog panels” (or “cattle panels” or “utility panels”- as they are also termed). These are heavy welded, galvanized wire, with bigger holes toward the top and smaller ones toward the bottom. I originally wanted to use regular welded fence wire, stretched taught, but Kirk talked me into the hog panels, and it was a great idea. They look fancier, and more rugged, or “industrial” than thin welded wire. And they are much sturdier, so they won’t get bent if the dogs stand on them. The dogs also enjoy being able to stick their heads easily through the squares for a better view (thankfully, the squares are plenty big, so there is no danger of a head-getting-stuck incident!).

Digging the fence post holes was challenging- each hole had several big 6+ inch rocks in it, so the tractor post hold digger didn’t help much, we had to do a lot of it by hand. The other challenge we ran into was that we chose to run the wire on the inside of the fence, making joining the wire at the corners, and attaching it to the posts, difficult. (It would have been easier running it on the outside, then we wouldn’t have needed to worry about joining it at all; but we didn’t like that look as well). Here is what we ended up with, and it worked OK, it is very rigid and strong overall.

I used T-post clips to wind around each horizontal junction, and also stapled into the corners.

We sanded and stained the posts, and made a gate out of the same materials to match. Then topped it off with ridiculously expensive, but oh-so-cool copper post tops. We are really pleased, it looks soooo much better than the old Grapes-Of-Wrath version! 🙂 Little by little, we are getting things done!