A DIY Dog Crate for Dummies

Dog with crate

A friend of the Antisocial Network spent a few years as an elementary school teacher, and she said that one of the hardest lessons to get across to some kids was the concept of reasonableness. For example, she once paid for a small purchase with a ten-dollar bill and the confused cashier gave her eleven dollars in change. Honest to the core, she used the exchange to teach the young man a lesson about reasonableness. A (not) surprising number of people who freelanced for eHow.com could have used a similar lesson. We're thinking of freelancers like Ricky Durrance because of his Cuteness.com post, "How to Build My Own Wire Dog Cage."¹

We're going to run some numbers based on a kennel 36" square and 36" high, and figure out how much it would cost to follow Ricky's plans. Durrance wanted his readers to "purchase"² a great number of items, starting with

"...a wooden board for use as the base of the cage. The size should be based on the dimensions of your dog..."

We assume he means a chunk of plywood, since you can't buy "a board" 36 inches on a side. That's most of a half sheet of ¾-inch exterior plywood, $22.39 at Menard's. Next, Ricky wants you to,

"Purchase welded wire panels from your local hardware store or pet shop supplier."

We don't have a local "pet shop supplier," so we checked with Menard's again: they only have one size, 36" x 72" — luckily, we'd need 2½ of them, so that's 3 times $19.99 or $59.97, and a running total of $82.36. DIYers will have to cut the panels to size and, according to Ricky, "nail them" to three sides of the "wooden board." Staples would probably work better...  Now, Durrance says, you'll want to

"Add another wire panel to the top of the cage using panel clamps that can be purchased. Attach a clamp at all four corners of the roof ..."

That's a little... tricky... since there doesn't seem to be such a thing as a "panel clamp," at least not one that functions the way Ricky seemed to think it does. We checked his "references" at the original, but they were all for crate vendors. An exhaustive search found something called a "joining clip connector for grid panels" that may work. A box of 25 will set you back $14.49 at the River (running total $96.85), Last, but not least, Durrance wants to use another chunk of the wire panel as a door:

"To hang the door, place two door hinges on one of the existing sides and attach the wire panel. Buy a latch from a hardware store so that the door can be locked and fix it to the door."

Pretending for a moment that it's a simple task to "place two door hinges ...[and] a latch " on wire mesh panels (it wouldn't be: trust us), that still will set you back another $15 or so, based on the cost of a gate kit consisting only of two hinges and a latch. Running total? $111.85 plus tax.
Durrance's "plans" don't include instructions for trimming the panels to prevent sharp edges on the cut wire and have zero information about what tools to use. Any poor fool who tried to follow this ridiculous set of steps would be left with a rickety, jury-rigged contraption what wouldn't withstand a determined chihuahua, much less a larger dog.

Oh, and by the way? You can buy a quality 36-inch wire crate for your dog for about $45... See now why Durrance is the Dumbass of the Day? Sure, you do.

¹ The original has been sent to a slightly less incompetent freelancer by Leaf Group, but can still be accessed using the Wayback machine at archive.org. Its URL was   ehow.com/how_7905050_build-own-wire-dog-cage.html
² Why don't freelancers ever use the word "buy"? Do they think using "purchase" sounds more... professional? Whatever the case, we're gonna check prices for all those purchases at our local Menard's.

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