We’ve Added a Fence

Having a dog without a fence is not the most enjoyable situation. Especially when you live on a lake and said dog loves swimming. Or when said dog loves wandering off into the neighbors yard, crossing streets without looking both ways or chasing cats up trees.

These reasons, along with the fact that we’re getting tired of putting Moxie on a cord every time she needs to go outside, led us to the construction of a fence.

We wanted to put it up right away, but it happened to be February when we purchased the house and in Minnesota that means the ground is still frozen. With that said, given the unseasonably warm winter we’ve had, we might have been able to do it a littler sooner than usual. Yes, I just brought up the weather – I wouldn’t be a true Minnesotan if I couldn’t bring the weather into any conversation.

Anyways, after a little juggling of schedules and planning around various family gatherings, we decided last weekend would be perfect. Because we only had a birthday party and Easter Sunday to work around! Why not squeeze in a fence too?

After pricing out Fleet Farm, Menards and Home Depot, we found fencing was cheapest at Fleet Farm, so Brett picked that up Thursday.

Friday, we headed over to Menards to pick up the fence posts and what did we learn? Well, it just so happens that the specific posts we wanted were on back-order for at least another week. This particular location had a few posts left and we were welcome to have the ones we wanted. Unfortunately, we needed 67.

So, we sorted through the 40 and came out with 11. Only 56 more to go.

Saturday morning, we headed out the door bright and early and stopped at Menards location #2. Last night, the clerk told us this location had 70 posts. Saturday morning, we only found 27.

Menards location #3 seemed promising. Except we only found 13. So close to the goal, yet so far.

With our time and patience running extremely low, we headed to Menards location #4. Side note: if you ever want to test the strength of a relationship, throw two hungry people in a car for four hours, having to stop every 20 miles at a different store, only to be told the item they wanted was out of stock. It’s a really good time. Thankfully, stop number four had 16 viable posts and we were ready to go.

We were able to start building around two o’clock and the entire process went quite smoothly, thanks to power tools and help from my parents.

We used an auger to dig the holes, spacing them roughly eight feet apart. After the posts were in, they needed to be tamped down and we used some spare 2 x 6 pieces of scrap wood we had laying around. After that, it was a matter of rolling out the fence and using a staple gun to secure it to the wooden posts. It wasn’t hard by any means, just time consuming. And of course it happened to be raining, which made the whole project all the more fun.

Five hours later, we had a fence! Even better, Brett was able to put up the gates on Monday which means we have a way to get in and out without having to walk all the way around the house. I know, terrible thing to complain about, but it’s nice either way.

And the pup? It’s taken her a few tries to figure out that she doesn’t have to stop and wait for us to put her on the cable before she goes outside. As for how long it will take her to figure out she’s actually fenced in? We’re still working on that one.

 

All our best,