I may have saved Clara’s life when I finally fenced a shed in my backyard.
It is one of these modular sheds and set on concrete blocks. Lots of people around here have them, and lots of wild critters learn to hide or the nest in the crawl space. Even Wrens takes their flute there as a way, station after they first leave the nest.
Some dogs find out how to crawl around down there.
With my gang Zani started it. She made the area under the shed at her playground. She not only traced critters down there, but she had a few small excavated snoozing areas. If I couldn’t find Zani in the yard, I knew where to see: a 12-inch room under a shed with bare nails sticking down the floor. I planned to block the shed with garden fence. I just had to figure out how to do it and still be able to open the door.
Meanwhile, Clara Zani Scooting looked around under the shed for a few days and decided it looked funny. But Zani was 19 pounds; Clara was 44 years old. Like her person, I told her she was too big, but she didn’t agree. When I was not aware, she would sometimes dive in there too.
I’m so glad I took this one video. When you see, note that I didn’t say anything as I looked under the side of the shed where dusty poofing out. I didn’t want her to try to get that way because she couldn’t get out on that side. There was only one place where she could leave and she had to throw her body sideways to do it.
You can hear the stress in my voice during the video. I was so worried that she would be caught or hurt. And it was before The most important scary event.
Link to video: Clara is naughty
Winter Evening I thought I would lose Clara
It was February and we had had unusually cold weather that collapsed with a heavy-for-os snow. The temperature was in teens and there were 10-12 inches of snow on the ground.
I took Clara out late one night and she immediately disappeared somewhere in the yard. I had a sinking feeling when I suspected where she had gone. I waded over to the shed. Yes, she was down there. In the freezing cold, in pitch darkness. The path she needed to take to get out would not have been visible to her because of the snow cover. But I could hear her scraping around. The scary thoughts flooded. The city was shut down; I couldn’t get help. If she was stuck or couldn’t find her way out, she could freeze to death. She wore a breaker collar, but could still be caught or caught. It would take a forklift to raise the shed. But it would be terribly dangerous with her down there and it would be the next day on the fastest. Would she survive the night? Could I throw hot water bottles and hand heaters down there? I grabbed straw.
Maybe we could dig her out that night? We will have to clear a bunch of snow first if we had to dig somewhere for her to get out. Was the earth frozen? My neighbors are dog lovers; Could I beat them up in this weather in the middle of the night? But of course Clara would be afraid of them.
The snow was up to the bottom of the shed and completely closed the room. I rarely had felt so fear in my life.
All this went through my head before I once knew if she had problems.
I carefully made my movement. I dug out the snow in the normal output area and turned on the light on my phone and pointed it straight down so it wouldn’t be in her eyes. I called her. She came out. My darling, my baby dog threw himself happily under the shed.
That’s when I promised myself that I would enclose that space.
Ex pen to rescue
For those who are unknown, “ex pen” is shortened for the strangely named “workout”, a length of hinged fence panels that can be configured for a dog fence. It turned out to be the missing piece, what allowed me to enclose the shed safely.
I had planned for years to put garden fences around the bottom of the shed. The distance of the cord can give access to squirrels, chipmunks and rabbits, but not dogs. (Note: A particular digger could loosen or move this kind of fence. Fortunately, I haven’t had one of them for a while.)
But I couldn’t put the fence around the front of the shed because it would block the door. And I couldn’t just skip the door area, because then I would have a worse situation: an entrance to crawlspace and no exit. I mulled this for a while. A number of concrete blocks, maybe, fill the gap under the front? Shorter fences? My dad would have brought the fence nicely around the corners and across the front to the edges of the door and then attached something to the bottom of the door that fits perfectly. I’m sure there are many practical people out there who would have found out something elegant. But I like my solution. I knocked two pieces of 4-foot steel enlargement moon in the ground near the ends of garden fences. I placed a length of the ex -pen around the front and overlapped the fence on the sides. I attached the ex -pen to reinforcing iron with carabiners. It is easy to remove a carabiner and move the ex -pen enough to open the shed door. And it looks riveting than many of my projects.
Some dogs jump an ex -pen. I’ve seen Zani jump out of a 4-foot pen from a standing start and this one is 3 meters. But I knew Clara wouldn’t jump it, especially into such a small room, and I learned that Lewis is even less of a jumper than she was. Phew!
Maybe she would have been in order?
When I think about it, a few years after that panic evening, it seems to me for the first time that the snow itself could have insulated enough space for Clara to keep warm enough overnight. I think now, probably that. But the only reason she would have had to stay there was if she had been fixed, which was a deadly problem in itself. There was no easy solution for it, even on the day, even though there had been no snow.
Clara is gone now, but the fence and the ex -pen fulfill their function: Prevents the next heat -intensive dog from the Siren Song of the Shed Crawl Space.
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Copyright 2025 Eileen Anderson