In This Edition:

— Latest Events at Kamp K9
—Info Feature: "How Does Kamp K9 Handle Winter?"
— Photo of the Month
— Links

WHAT'S HAPPENING

HAPPY NEW YEAR

Here’s to all of my friends, both 2- and 4-legged, who make things fun.
Here’s to all four seasons. They change and keep our brains from getting bored. (But hopefully winter is short and the snowfall totals
slow down. My back would be oh so grateful.)
Here’s to coffee strong enough to stand your spoon up in it.
Here’s to music and art, without which our souls would wither and dry up, and we’d all go insane.

But mostly, here's to YOU.
Thanks for helping Kamp K9 survive 2007...and hopefully prosper in 2008!

 

INFO FEATURE:

HOW KAMP K9 HANDLES WINTER

We’ve had quite a winter so far, haven’t we? Maybe the snow totals for December weren’t a record, but it sure felt like it to me. It creates a challenge; If you recall, the “Terms & Conditions” form lists as one if the requirements the following: “Must not be able to jump over fences 5.5 feet.” The fence height here is 6 feet; we assume that there’ll be 6” of snow pack in the winter at any given time, hence the 5.5 foot limit. However, the play yards currently have anywhere between 12” and 36” of hard pack.

The solution has been to take the snow blower and create a trench around the entire fence perimeter. It’s worked nicely; our 4-legged friends don’t typically think of trying to get out, but when people drive up in their vehicles, it’s always a curiosity to them, and they’d love to say “hi” in person, but with the trench, no one has even tried to get over.

The trench at the fence facing the parking area

With the open concept of boarding and daycare, people ask about keeping everyone warm when it’s cold outside. In the past, our dog friends have always had an open door, over which hung a plastic freezer curtain. Just before the first snow, I took down the freezer curtain, and installed a dog door. (This door has a hard panel that snaps in place; it’s put into place every night.) With the amount and size of dogs here over Christmas, the swinging door didn’t last long; it got snapped thanks to a big dog’s butt. The solution was to use parts from the old freezer curtain to make flexible flaps both inside and outside, and it seems to be working nicely.  Of course, some days, like Thursday the 3rd, it’s WAY too cold to do much outside, and on days like that, the hard panel is put in place and their outside time is limited to potty breaks.

Now, with all this snow comes another issue: power outage. Actually, the longest power outages here have been when there wasn’t any snow (such as the Patriot’s Day storm in April), but since the heavy snows have fallen, there have been a few occasions where power has flickered off for a moment and then come right back on. (Being a mile down the street from a CMP sub station is helpful.) The thoughts of no power during cold weather that popped into my head when we had no power in April inspired me to get an LP gas-fueled generator, capable of producing 10,000 watts (enough to power the entire house, including the business portions of it). It has an automatic transfer switch; it comes on if power is lost for at least 30 seconds, and it transfers power back and shuts off when it senses that power is once again coming from the CMP lines. You can all rest assured that no one will be stuck in the cold if the power goes out!

The generator and its 150-gallon tank; enough fuel to run the generator constantly for over 2 days.

 

PHOTO OF THE MONTH:

Somebody's ready for some fun in the snow!