We’ve got two dogs – a geriatric cattle x kelpie and a not-so-young rotty – and they’ve know wooden fenced, tightly-packed backyards their whole lives. They’ve always been inside dogs, chilling on the couch with us and sleeping on our bed, but they’ve never seen kangaroos, or horses or really been able to see neighbouring dogs before, except when out on the odd walk.
The listing wasn’t *wrong*, the property is fully fenced. But that definition is pretty lose if you look at the state of the fencing. Perhaps with a better trained, or much smaller dogs, we could have left it, but with a Mareema next door guarding a flock of chooks and 3 kiddos under 10, we weren’t about to rise leaving our two outside unsupervised while at work for 8-10 hours a day.
So the very first weekend we were finding a solution to our very open side fence. I guess you can’t take the suburbia out of the girl that quickly (within days) – seeing your neighbours go about their day-to-day activities is unheard of, or at least was not my ideal backyard view – nothing against the neighours, of course, it really was just to ensure we don’t have any full blown dog fights on our hands.
Bamboo panels (not the thin, flimsy ones you see on apartment patios, rolled out and wired together), roped to look like rafts. I thought hubby was going to hate it! They have a very “we should put a bali hut here” vibe about them… not our thing. But they were available, easy to install and (not really very) cheap – cheap for fencing, I guess.
The plan is absolutely to replace this “proper fencing” in the future, but for now and the next forseeable 5 years or so, we’ve mitigated the side fence issue and secured the backyard for the dogs.
Now we just have to figure out how to get the metre long rio steaks, previously used to hold sleepers in place for garden edging, out of the ground. An impossible task when the ground is too wet because the dirt creates a vacuum and equally as difficult when too dry because of the amount of digging required… Oh well, a new challenge for a new day!
I think the safety pole covers we found among the debris under the house contrast nicely against the bamboo. Plus they’re an excellent talking post with guests!
