Our Kennel
Over the last year, we've built a new kennel. We didn't intend it to be so big, or to have completed all the phases at once, or to have built it to commercial standards. But we have the certificate of occupancy and our "kids" love it!

Features
The kennel floors are a sanded epoxy that's easy to clean and the rest of the floors are tiled. It's heated and cooled and runs from the same well as our home. We play music 24hours and discovered that the vaulted ceilings that make it airy and loft-like also make it a great echo-chamber - so the open-air we'd imagined for warm Southern nights was quickly closed in by windows. We found the most important thing was to have electricity and water (safely separated, of course) available almost everywhere; that's been key.

Routine

This is "Baby", one of our Harriers. You can see from the blurs, he has a hard time holding his tail or his tongue! We like keeping the water inside, and each run has indoor and outdoor rest benches. The indoor benches can easily flip-up for cleaning.

Cleaning supplies have a home, and here you see some of the built-in crates we use. The Beagles each have their own crate where they eat, and while they eat and settle down to chew a bone, we clean indoors & out.

The outdoor runs are well-lit and secure. Play yards are just past the kennels.

This is the indoor view of the indoor-outdoor runs. We like the vaulted ceilings, and the fan both cools and helps keep it dry.

Tapestries help control the "echos" and make it a pretty place to spend some time. We feed Eukanuba. We find it's effective (they've all got terrific coats) and it's high-food value, so you don't get a lot of waste (that's important when you're feeding so many).

This is the "bath-room" according to the "kids"- but we also use it for grooming and playing.

This is the "whelping room" where puppies are born & raised but it's nice and warm, so we also use it for our older kids, like Rap City sitting in the back corner (she's almost 14 years old!) and her buddy Patience (her real name is "Tries My Patience" and she still does...)

This shows our bathroom, the laundry, the kids' bath, and the kitchen/lab, where we wash dishes and use the microscope for diagnostics.

More later!