Boy Scout Project ( Dog Boxes) Looking for ideas

[Bingo]

  I am a Boy Scout leader in the Pittsburgh area. With winter coming my Troop is talking about building some dog boxes to be given away by the Animal Rescue Legue to folks that need them for their dogs.
   I am good with my hands as are many of the other Scout leaders but two heads are better than one.

  Do you have any easy plans for cold weather dog boxes that my kids can build. One thing that has me thinking is how to build a door that the chain will not get hung up in but the dog will not chew off. Also, demensions for houses according to breed size would help too. Any and all suggestions/constructive comments are appriciated. Thank You.

[freetrapper]

Bingo if you will go to coondawgs.com, than go to classifids. Scroll down kennls and look through there a few different ideas. On page 5 hummer has plans for building a dog house from 1 sheet of plywood. Hope this helps.

[Rex in OTZ]

Alaska dog houses are rectangular and on legs, off set front opening (up off bottom and to the side to cut harsh arctic wind), made 4 doghouses this fall from scrapwood, roughly modeled off a store bought one I found and fixed, average size dog house, sides are 2 foot square, front/top/back are 2foot x3 foot. opening is up off the bottom so straw wont spill, they have a removable botton so they can be easily cleaned (change straw) assemble them useing coated/galvanized wood decking screws (not brittle drywall screws), nails will eventually work loose as well as pneumatic shot staples, best is wood screws as they can be thightened or replaced in a minuet with a cordless screwgun. its still dark in alaska at 9am, when it gets lighter I'll send a picyure of the house and basickly how its constructed, some thinking goes into this, ours are flat toped and the top sheet overlapps the sides and ends so rain is not channeled in the house through the gaps, so you need 4 legs 4 long stringers, 4 short stringers to reinforce the corners, 2ea 2foot ends, 4ea 2x3foot side/top/bottom panels the bottom you cut a undersize by half to threquarters inch on one end and side so panel will tuck up inside from underneath.

[Rex in OTZ]

10am its minus10F with a 15mph wind out the NNE.
I have modified both these so the bottom can be pulled out, tip the house on its back and push in bottom panels its sitting on 2x2 stringers ringing the botton and tip out the bottom, and then its easy to clean.
Also make it light enough to easily move(dot tie dog to it as they'll drag em round) out of a drift as I need to do with small house.
They say a picture is worth a thousand words, My dogs all have dog houses, seen some folks just tie dogs to them plastic dog kennels and throw a quilt over and worse, the two dog houses I'll be showing are old ones given to me so one is obviousely flawed, you dont see dog complaining though....these were easy to get at by truck headlight's so may have to skip the insides today for the ones I made, the critters were cozey and dident want to get out. I hadent mentioned opening size for a blackLab/GermanShepard/Sled Dog your looking at 9.5inches wide and one foot tall, can adjust for smaller dogs, adding a 2x2 round the rim is recomended, keeps the chain from sawing the opening bigger and chewers from ruining the opening, also seen em use 2x4 set on edge as well, may need to do that to the smaller dog house pictured will help trap heat better, it should have the off set opening so critter can get snuggled in a out the wind corner, you want efficent use of space, too big the house will be cold, too small they cant get all the way out the wind if wind shifts, long enough legs to keep it off ground (coldest place to lay is groundlevel)

[no guns here]

Best one we ever had was built by my grandfather.  Big and heavy but it would sleep 4 pointers.  Rectangular that sat about 2 inches off the ground so it didn't sit straight in rain water.  Had a sloped roof with asphalt shingles on it.  The roof was removable so you could get bedding out or easily add more.  We used a bale of wheat straw for bedding in the fall and usually replaced it in mid winter.  The door was off-set and had another piece of plywood as an inside wall.  The dogs had to walk inside and around a corner to lay down.  This kept the wind out.  We later cut some small openings in the sides so they could see out as we had one male that wouldn't stay in anything he couldn't see out of.  We added some covers to all but one of the openings in the winter.  Just screwed on some plywood strips.  The dogs liked the roof, they would sleep on it during the day if it got cool outside.  The asphalt shingles got warm in the sun.  In the summer we moved it to the other side of the dog run into the shade and they would sleep on the roof to stay cool in the breeze.

NGH

[SHOOTALL]

I built wooden houses for years , Now its dogloos for the labs and 55 gal. barrels for the deer dogs . Take a 55 gas plastic barrel clean it and build a salt treated frame to cradle it . place the barrel so the 3/4 hole is at the bottom as you lay the barrel in the cradle .Lay out and  cut the sides and bottom of the smallest door on the end with the holes for filling . Take a hand torch and heat the remaing line and bend up the door. cut off all but about 3 inches . The lip will deflect rain water. Screw the barrel to the frame in many places . In cold weather fill with ceader chips ( I have used wheat straw , pine chips and strips of news paper and all seemed to harbor ear mites) or pine straw. In winter dirt or other insulators can be banked aginst the sides and back . I like white barrels as it seems to let heat from the sun in. We also drill a couple holes in the bottom and grade the barrel so the entrance end is abot an inch lower that the back end. If you could get donated barrels these make nice houses and don't look bad if constructed with care.

OH yea leave the bung in in winter and out in hot weather