Challenges To Housing Dogs In A Free Roaming Setting
Free roaming offers an ideal environment for dogs, as it aligns with their natural instincts as pack animals.
However, it's crucial to ensure that this kind of environment is managed properly to truly benefit the animals. One of the significant challenges in creating a free roaming environment is providing adequate housing.
It's essential to design spaces that are safe, comfortable, and accommodating to the social nature of dogs. Proper housing should allow for both communal interaction and individual rest time, ensuring that all dogs can coexist peacefully.
As we prepared for the launch of the shelter project, we placed an order for hundreds of wooden huts. Each hut featured a sloped roof covered in durable roofing felt. We chose vibrant colours to paint the huts, ensuring they stood out and brought a sense of cheerfulness to the area. To protect them from the elements, we sealed each hut, providing an added layer of weather resistance.
The huts, once vibrant and orderly like well loved beach huts standing in a row at any seaside town, soon became a testament to canine creativity and collaboration.
The Carpenter led the charge, his enthusiasm contagious. Each day, the huts were transformed, as tails wagged and paws hammered. New designs emerged—unique, whimsical, and sometimes a tad eccentric. The huts became a living art installation, a testament to the community spirit and boundless energy of the dogs. Some had no roofs, some were missing sides or had unique entrance stylings
The wooden huts, if left untouched by the dogs, were perfect. Wood is renowned for its natural insulation qualities, capable of absorbing and retaining heat at a gradual pace. This makes it an excellent material for shelters, especially considering Turkey's climate, which experiences harsh winters and sweltering summers. Such characteristics would ensure comfort for the dogs throughout the varying seasons, providing warmth in the winter and a cooler refuge during summer's peak. But having to replace them frequently is something totally out of our reach.
A couple of years ago, we were frequently tagged in posts about a celebrity content creator who had ingeniously repurposed oil drums for dog housing. We were thrilled by this idea, as it seemed like the perfect solution to our needs. The concept of recycling items that were no longer needed resonated with us, and the fact that the dogs wouldn’t be able to chew on them was an added bonus. To top it off, we discovered that we could source these oil drums for just around ten pounds each. Also, they looked amazing, we knew people would love them. We were overjoyed to have found such a practical and sustainable solution. And they looked good too. They would have looked fabulous in our media.
Our initial excitement quickly faded when we realized the limitations. The structures became unbearably hot in the summer and freezing in the winter, making them unusable for the dogs for much of the year. This left us heartbroken, as we had hoped they would be the answer to the problem we had.
Last winter, one of our dedicated community carers shared a heart warming video with us. It showed a row of shelters crafted from breeze blocks, generously donated by someone with a big heart. These shelters, with their blanket doors, might not catch the human eye as particularly attractive, but they brought immense joy and comfort to the dogs in our care. These simple yet effective structures offered critical protection from the harsh elements, ensuring the survival of both vulnerable puppies and their mothers throughout the cold months. The happiness and relief it brought to our carer was a testament to the profound impact of this thoughtful act. And it got me thinking.
Building huts with bricks that have a high thermal mass could be an excellent solution for creating structures that are naturally warmer in the winter and cooler in the summer. These bricks have the ability to absorb and retain heat, providing a more comfortable living environment throughout the year. However, when we discussed this idea with our mayor, he expressed concerns about the potential weight of such structures, especially if we were to construct them in the high hundreds on the designated shelter land. We are currently awaiting feedback from his engineering team on this issue, and we are hopeful that they will approve the project so that we can proceed with the building plans.
Thank you for reading this, we face many challenges while caring for hundreds of vulnerable dogs. I plan to share many of them with you. Please subscribe, there is a free & paid version of this substack. A subscription helps the dogs enormously
Michelle x