Facilities for Mature Dogs
Our beagles consist of
-
pets/retired dogs,
-
males,
-
females, and
-
partially-grown beagles.
This number allows us to
have several boys, so we can pair the moms and dads with their best partner.
Having only one male would mean that a breeder would not be able to choose
the BEST partners to produce good puppies.
Since our puppies must be
as free as possible of infectious bacteria and viruses, we keep our dogs
that have puppies in pens/runs rather than letting them run free. Dogs in
the country that run free are difficult to keep free of coccidia, giardia,
tapeworms and fleas (from eating rabbits), etc. So the only way to make it
work is for us to keep them away from the organisms we don't want them
exposed to. It also keeps our females from being bred by stray dogs. The
pens are cleaned once to twice daily (more often when puppies are weaned), and they have clean water 24/7 and
some of the
dogs have food 24/7. Some that would get overweight with free access to food are fed twice daily instead
of continuously, though.
Our mature dogs have pens to run/play in with
either sand, cement, powdered gravel, pea-sized gravel, or small gravel footing. The
small gravel footing exercises their feet the best, but the
sand/powder/pea-sized gravels and cement are much more effectively cleaned. We are not
able to allow the dogs to live on grass as described in the next paragraph.
The Iowa Department of Agriculture and Land Stewardship
inspector that visits us each year to approve the facilities
for our license will not allow us to let the dogs live on grass as their
main pen surface. I believe
it's due to the inability to keep grass clean and free of bugs and germs. In
any case, to be licensed we have to have pens/runs with replaceable footing
(sand, gravel, lime, etc.) or else something solid like cement that can be
disinfected. We are
allowed to have "play yards" with grass, so included a grassy yard with
our new kennel built in 2017.
Our Kennel
Instead of three houses that we had previously, we built one very large
house in 2010-2011 to make playing, heating/cooling, and cleaning more
efficient. In the spring of 2017, we built another so we can better
separate boys from girls.
Their homes include outdoor runs with
doggie doors to indoor pens. The buildings are heated in the winter, and
stay cool in the summer either with air conditioning or ground source
cooling, as well as fans. Inside, they have a dog house (removed during the
summer, as an indoor dog house is too warm for them to enjoy during warm
seasons) and an area outside
of the house that is still inside the building, so they can choose their own climate.
Outside runs open to their yard.
New kennel completed in the fall of 2017, above. The yard around the
kennel is fenced for them to play in.
2012:
Note the cat on the roof...silly kitty!
2010-11 kennel area, during construction.
I wanted you to know that our dogs ARE in
pens/runs in case that is against your philosophy. We must do
it this way to prevent unwanted pregnancies and unhealthy/infected puppies,
and in fact are required to do so for state licensure (the dogs can't run
free), as we have 3 or more females and that legally requires us to be
licensed. Our kennel inspector also will not allow grass as their only outdoor
footing (it can't be disinfected), so we have experimented with sand and small gravel as well as
concrete.
"The Nursery"
Newborn Puppy Facilities
We began building a new puppy room in 2019,
and because of Covid delays, it took three years to get it completed to the
point that we could use it! It is almost completed (October, 2023) and
I hope to have it decorated and photo worthy by the end of 2024. Like the
other two kennels, is
heated and air conditioned, and all puppies have doggie doors available 24/7
to help develop the idea that pottying happens outside and not inside. Potty
training is still needed at their new homes, because they typically don't
have access to doggie doors in their new homes. But, this is a better start
than not having that doggie door, as they are alreay going outside to do
that business instead of doing it inside.
