In the Dog House

In the middle of New Year's night, I awoke to an orange sky outside of my bedroom window. I jumped out of bed to see if the world was ending and discovered that our backyard was ablaze. Apparently, our dogs were tired of being neglected and became arsonists in order to attract some attention. It reminds me of a Far Side comic.

At the time, however, it was less than funny- Emotions are pronounced when you are suddenly awoken. Our first thought was that the pups were burning alive...scary! We found them, however, safe in their indoor kennels (we rarely bring them in for the night) phew! Our first resort was a fire extinguisher (thank you, mom, for supplying us with all of the safety items in our home). The fire extinguisher scene was almost comic...it did nothing. This was a BIG fire and it was only about 5 feet away from our house. Our hose was frozen. It was past midnight on New Year's... While David was breaking up the ice in the hose I was ineffectively flinging hay/brush out of the way in an attempt to avoid spreading and debating the pros/cons of calling 911. In the end, we got the fire out ourselves, but it took us a while to recover.

Here is the moment we first broke the news to Winston. He was devastated.

In an attempt to compensate for the dogs' demotion in the family, David spent all of his free time building this pooch-mansion. It still needs to be painted and roofed, but it's current state maintains the luxury we were going for. It's got an awesome R value (no more electric heating for us), and vaulted ceilings in the living room area. Best of all, David can fit in it quite comfortably in case he ever needs to take a trip to the "dog house."