Cold Weather Dog Houses for the Clueless Southerner

A winterized dog house

If you're a dog owner who's ever lived in a place that is cold – really cold, not like Nashville or St. Louis, but some place like Minot North Dakota – you know you need to help your furry friend keep warm in winter. That's why most people keep their dogs inside when it's freezing cold, but some people insist on outdoor kennels. If you want to know "How to Build a Winterized Dog House for Cold Weather,"¹ however, you probably don't want to ask someone like Krista Raye, who tried (and failed) to provide instructions at Cuteness.com.

Apparently Raye's English Lit degree failed her when she read the question, because she never actually addressed the "build" part of the title (shame on her eHow.com content editor). Instead, she rattled off a list of tips she found somewhere and reworded, including ideas like

• Place your dog house where it is out of the direct wind.
• Raise your dog house off the ground with a platform.
• Cover the doorway of the dog house to keep cold air and moisture out.
• Install a small heater for your dog house.

Now we don't disagree with those steps for making certain that a dog house is winterized – Krista, from her veranda somewhere in the American South, did find a useful article. What we do disagree with is that this has anything to do with building a winterized dog house. Her lack of familiarity with designing and building, by the way, is manifest in this tip: "Insulate the dog house with sheets of Styrofoam. Buying rolled sheets is probably the easiest bet." WTF, everyone here at the Antisocial Network world headquarters wondered, are "rolled sheets of Styrofoam"? Did Raye conflate rigid Styrofoam® with rolled fiberglass insulation? We'll never know... but we do know that people who care about their pet will cover any insulation to keep the dog from trying to eat it.

In the real world, people who 1) know how to build things and 2) know about dogs and cold weather start designing by sizing the dog house to the dog. That's because you want your dog to be able to keep the interior warm with his body heat. You also want to design the house so that there is a wall in front of the door to block the wind. Our founder once built a dog house for a Casper, Wyoming, winter that used many of these same tips -- but he, unlike Raye, has lived in cold climates.

For a far better idea of how to keep Fido warm in the winter, check out what Ron Hazelton says about building a winterized dog house.

If you use "tips" like Raye's, maybe your dog would survive a Montana (or Maine, Alaska, Wisconsin, Minnestota...) winter, but we think they're better suited to the mild winter-like seasons in Atlanta and Houston. Krista, a self-described "Steel Magnolia," knows nothing about building, and nothing about cold weather – which is probably why she failed to inform and why she's our Dumbass of the Day (again).

¹ The original has been deleted by Leaf Group, but can still be accessed using the Wayback machine at archive.org. Its URL was   cuteness.com/article/build-dog-house-cold-weather

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