If you have read some of my recent posts, you probably know that I have been discussing my exploits and experiences after being assigned to the JITC at Fort Huachuca, Arizona. My story today centers around a subject I have not written about before. Well, that’s not entirely true. Quite a while back, I wrote a post about looking a gift horse in the mouth. Thus, my story today is not about the Ford Tempo from hell, which I have talked about a lot lately. It is also not about the new house I had built in Sierra Vista, although it is related to that house. In fact, this story directly relates to the post that I most recently wrote about. That’s right. You remember I talked about being careful about what you wish for because you might get it. Well, we got it. We actually got two – two dogs. My kids promptly named them Sassy and Frisky because they picked out a girl dog and a boy dog. Go figure. As with my kids, the girl dog belonged to my daughter, and the boy dog belonged to my son. Other than the joy of owning a dog to play with and for companionship, my kids didn’t have much to do with their dogs. They didn’t feed them, and they certainly didn’t clean up after them. Since they weren’t cleaning up after the dogs, our backyard began to be riddled with dog shit. Here is the problem with that. When you have an acre of land, the majority of which resides in your backyard in a fenced-in area, that backyard gives those dogs a whole lot of area to pepper with dog shit. You never know where that dog shit is going to be until you step into it. In the desert, grass doesn’t grow very well. As a result, another problem that you have is that there’s more dirt in your backyard than there is grass. Usually, that’s not a big problem, especially when it comes time to mow the grass because you have a helluva lot less grass to mow. I would say that is actually a benefit. But the problem you have is that dog shit looks a whole lot like dirt. Thus, when you have a yard full of dirt, it is hard to distinguish dog shit from dirt at a distance. As a result, it becomes very easy to step into dog shit accidentally. You don’t even realize that you stepped into a problem until you start smelling like shit. And everywhere you go, the smell of shit goes with you. It follows you around like a stinky cloud of shit. You just can’t get rid of that smell. After a while, it finally dawns on you that, hey, maybe I stepped in a pile of dog shit, so you lift up your feet and check your shoes. And sure as shit, you have dog shit on your shoes. It’s sort of like walking on a trail out in the middle of the desert that is frequented by rattlesnakes and horses. You always have to watch where you plant your feet because you don’t want to step in horse shit. After all, there ain’t no place to clean the shit off of your shoes. But an even bigger problem is if you accidentally step on Jake because you didn’t see him. What’s that? Who is Jake? We’ve been down this road many times. Jake, the snake. Get it, got it, good. That backyard can be just as treacherous as one of those desert trails sans the rattlesnakes. The beauty of a brick fence is that Jake can’t climb over brick fences. Unless, of course, Jake grew up in a circus. But I haven’t met any rattlesnakes who grew up in a circus and were trained to perform circus stunts. I’ve seen lions, tigers, (bears, oh my) and even elephants, but no rattlesnakes. I wonder how an act like that would go anyway. With the circus animal trainer, get out in the ring with a rattlesnake or two or three and a whip? I don’t know about that. That seems rather treacherous, too. Maybe that’s why I’ve never seen an act like that. But I digress. When my wife and I got tired of stepping in dog shit scattered throughout our backyard, she convinced me that it was time to build a dog run. First, I had to build a doghouse for the dogs. That meant the doghouse had to be big enough for both mutts. The first thing you must know about this doghouse is that I am not a carpenter. I have never been, nor will I ever be, a carpenter. That doghouse reflected that fact. However, the doghouse had four sides and a sloped roof. That roof also had shingles to protect it and keep it water-resistant. It had a doorway big enough for the dogs to enter and exit easily, and the doghouse was big enough to house both dogs. I measured out a dog run that was long enough and wide enough to give the dogs plenty of room to exercise. Next, I rented a post-hole digger to dig post holes so that I could cement galvanized fence posts into the ground. After I cemented galvanized fence posts, I mixed and poured a concrete slab for the dogs to run on. Finally, I erected a five-foot-high chain link fence perimeter around the dog run. The last thing I needed to do was build a canopy over a portion of the dog run to provide shade. There was also a Date tree at one end of the dog run to provide shade and a Mesquite tree at the opposite end. Between the trees and the canopy, the dogs had plenty of shade to protect them from the desert sun and provide shade. The dog run also had a gate to allow the kids to open and close the dog run whenever they needed to feed the dogs and sweep the concrete to clean dog shit. Then, the kids could take the dogs out of the dog run whenever they wanted to take them out on walks or to play with them. Things “worked out” quite well for a while and we experienced no further exercises in futility.
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