Wet weather and dogs. What does everyone else do practically? I know I'm not the only person to have quite a few dogs, and I'd love to know how everyone else have sorted out all the problems that come with the wet weather.

Ignoring my 2 small dogs as they live separately (and have small paws so are a lot easier to clean up after), I have 7 large dogs. My back garden is part concrete but part "grass" -well there would be grass if it didn't disappear because of the dogs. :) So the long and the short of it is, in this weather they only need go outside for 5 minutes to be covered in mud by the time they come back in.(Even if they stay on the concrete that never dries in this weather, so they still get muddy if they sit down for even a moment, and my oldies always do.) The shortcoated dogs aren't TOO bad, but the longcoated ones get covered everywhere, and when they run back inside the mud goes everywere: up the walls, on all the cupboards in the kitchen etc. Fair enough, that wipes down. But the floor, the floor is painted concrete, and in the summer it stays nice and clean as I wash it several times a week. But now I can wash it and as soon as the dogs have been out it will be as muddy again so you can tell no difference -and it really isn't practical to wash it 6 or 7 times a day. :) Also the dogs' BEDS get very muddy. I use large (most of them giant) plastic ones and unfortunately I CANNOT use bedding as I have several dogs that rip any bedding to pieces and EAT it and then get sick. So the beds get just as dirty as the floor.

I don't mind spending hours cleaning (spend about 4 hours a day) but it would be nice to know if others have come up with some solutions to make it easier -especially as we still hope to move and could then start from scratch and get things JUST RIGHT.

So, those of you with several large dogs, how do you cope? Do they live in kennels outside? If so, how do THEY (and the dogs) stay clean in wet weather -are the runs covered to keep dry?  What flooring do you have? What flooring do you have indoors if the dogs live in like mine do? What do you have in your back "gardens" -concrete, flags, gravel, what? Any solutions to keeping the beds a bit cleaner? I sometimes think it's only MY dogs that are muddy and dirty one day after their last bath and do so wonder how other people manage! I'm not wanting to sound like I moan, I'm just after ideas. :)

Well I only have two but it sometimes seems like more!

Changed the grass to grave, SO much better, no mud, no weeds, no mowing, and I think it smells sweeter to, easy to pick up from etc.

Bedding - waterproof Kudos  beds, just hose or wipe down, no fleas or dust mites either, dry very quickly, I have the industrial strength ones.

Flooring - tiling. With couple of rugs.

Walls - washable paintwork.

Try and dry dogs as much as possible when they come in  before they dry themselves on the upholstery.

I agree - we were in this situation last year, but now we have a gravel garden instead of grass/mud. It looks much nicer, and it's much easier to pick up dog poo. Definitely one of the best things we've done. :-)

I hate this time of year, the mud is a nightmare, we have cream carpets, we live in a mid terraced house and the lounge is at the back so when tyler goes out to do his business he comes straight into the front room, mud and all. We have blankets down in appropriate spots and wipe his feet as soon as he comes in, then he is usherd into the kitchen to dry off properly it like a military mission. We could do with laminate through the house, no grass in the garden, the kitchen being at the back of the house and not living in a terraced house lol.

cream carpets? CREAM CARPETS?

:D I know.  In my little back to back cottage the carpets got the heave ho on day one replaced by lovely washable slate tiles with a good bit of grip on them, a couple of rugs that can be lifted when the dogs come home and never looked back :)

Sounds like gravel will be it for when we move. (What's so annoying is that we are a bit like in limbo now, don't want to do anything to the house or garden as we will move -yet we could be stuck here for another year for all we know....)

I find it very difficult to pick up poo from gravel without taking half the gravel with it!

Kudos beds -what do they look like and where do you get them? Sounds VERY interesting.

Hiya, i got my kudos bed off the internet (just type in kudos dog beds) it cost about £50 for a really big one and it is the best bed ever, they last a lifetime (dogs not humans) and are great, really easy to clean. I would highly recommend them to all doggie peeps :-)

Tohme

Kudos beds seem the answer to our dreams :D How long have you had them and how often have you had to replace them ? I assume the 'Heavy Duty' is the same as 'Industrial strength' ? :)

'Try and dry dogs as much as possible when they come in  before they dry themselves on the upholstery. '

I speed read this and read it as '

'Tumble dry dogs...............' :D :D

A company called Over The Top sell really good dirt trapper mats.  I believe they come in different sizes and I have a large one (a bit like a carpet runner only different material).  It seems to grip the mud as they walk along it.  They also do dog throws which are very tightly woven so dirt, wet doesn't go through.  We have solid wood floors with rugs so I cover the rugs with the throws, they work really well. 

Thanks Chalkley shall definitely check into that!

They are just up the road from me and they are very expensive but they do have 'local' sales sometimes so if anybody is interested then let me know and I will keep an eye out :)

When my lot come in wet they stay in the back of the house (kitchen, utility room and back hall) where the tiles are moppable and the rugs can be washed. They can come through to the living room when they've dried (we get through a lot of towels!). :)

>When my lot come in wet they stay in the back of the house (kitchen, utility room and back hall) where the tiles >are moppable and the rugs can be washed.

Yes mine do too JG but it's the state of THAT room (kitchen/dining room) that's so awful....... I'm wearing mops out at a speed or knots here, LOL.

I am having a nightmare just now. 5 white dogs and rain rain and mud.. infact cheesed off with it. ;-)

I've only got a small dog but I constantly bless the existence of a large utility room with a sliding door between it and the kitchen. It's called the airlock and all disgustingly muddy dogs get trapped in there before they can spread the worst of it anywhere else. I don't think I'd like to even imagine the effect of one small muddy dog on a cream carpet though. :)

I only have two dogs, but as 1 is a Newfie I think that's equivalent to about 5 in the dirt/muck stakes (not to mention the drool and hair) :rolleyes: :D

How do I cope with the dirt? Simple...I have inherited a very irresponsible attitude to housework from my mother, for which I am very grateful to her :D :D

>I have inherited a very irresponsible attitude to housework from my mother, for which I am very grateful to her

:D :D

I have to admit something here which might not go down too well.  Before I buy anything whether it's household goods or clothes etc I always make sure they are low maintenance because life's too short to spend precious time on mundane, thankless, neverending repetitive tasks.  Now I can't say my dog is low maintenance in all departments because she is loopy lou in the nicest possible way but when looking at breeds the dog's coat was a big consideration. Yep she jumps in smelly ponds but I don't mind (too much) because giving her a bath is no big deal (she might not agree though :D)

>I have to admit something here which might not go down too well.

Goes down fine with me, chez! Only much as I loved my old cocker spaniel and still miss him, I actually don't miss the hours spent trying to turn him from the Wild Muddy Dog of Borneo into something halfway respectable! So when I was considering which breed this time around I also took these maintenance matters into consideration.

Although my attitude to housework wouldn't pass muster on "How Clean is your Hovel" either.

>Before I buy anything whether it's household goods or clothes etc I always make sure they are low maintenance because life's too short to spend precious time on mundane, thankless, neverending repetitive tasks.

Aah, A woman after my own heart :) the Newfie is the most high maintenance thing in our house :)

Lol Shanylola :)

When I get dressed in the morning, what I wear is depended on will it show the slob, will the hair brush off and when I get muddy paw prints on me will it blend in with the pattern :D

Blimey Blue don't envy you!!!!!!!!!!!!

My first 2 belgies were the muddiest dogs ever, as i used to take them out whatever the weather :D

We had a great second hand but quality carpet in the hall - it was dark red and I never had to wash it as mud seemed to vanish...why can't i find such a carpet now?! I loved it.

In the living room, i had a very dark brown carpet and beige and chocolate fuzzy patterned furniture - I hate to say it, but mud seemed to vanish :D :D :P

I did have a good vacuum and i guess most of it dried and then got sucked up over time!!

Lindsay
x

When it is freezing it is great and the gound and mud is all hard..like tonight mind have been out charging about all night..a warmer raining night brings tears to my eyes :-D :-D

Towels in the car, towels at the back door, towels at the front door. The dogs have and go through more towels than we do. or at least it feels like that when I'm constantly stuffing the washing machine full of them!!! Also we have an outdoor tap at the back door which is good for rinsing the worst of the mud of. The mud always makes its' way through to the living room etc. but I wait till it's dry and then it hoovers up just fine. Obviously this would not suit the really house proud dog owner, but I guess I'm not that houseproud. It's usually when the weather is like this I dream about living in a hot and dry country. It always amazes me just how much time you can spend getting the dogs clean, the house clean , and then lastly yourself clean after an outing, or is that just me??

woodchip is a good surface for them, its easy to pick up from and is fairly clean and doent dig in their little feet!

Hi,
As I said many times on here before I have my garden fenced off with a gate an area (big enough to play in) for the dogs it is great in the winter wet weather etc: no mud just wet feet then I put a towel down (old beach towels) to wipe thier feet .
Then in the summer or when its dry just open the gate and they can use the garden when it suits you!!
Of course it also depends on the size of your garden our is very long and wide so they disappear in the dark and I cant see what they're upto!!

I have beardies very.. long coated dogs that pick up everything ! ....I bought boots on www.countrymun.com they cost £25.00 a set...they're great... the girls love them and run when I try to remove them....he he he
they fit right up the leg held on with velcro and they can play in them too....very good for shows getting from the car to the venue..

Also for very bad weather I have a foul weather coat very thin unlined not for warmth (beardies dont need it ) just keeps them from getting soaked through ....I also put it on when they go out to toilet if its pouring down saves time on the cleaning up.   got it from www.petplanet.co.uk £15.00

Gravel in the garden, laminate floors throughtout downstairs, dirt trapper mats inside both doors and 3 collies with good bladder control! :p

Yes you do pick up a bit of gravel with the poo but it doesnt really matter and when they have the squits its a godsend. If they did that on grass or patio - yukky dah!

I have a concrete area fenced off from the garden which is a godsend.

Inside, stone flooring or laminate.  They don't get on the laminate until the evening so are usually clean by then, the stone flooring washes easily.

When they come back from a very muddy walk in the wood I lay large towels over their beds, by the afternoon they are dry and I shake the towels outside.  That is when they are not being washed and tumbled.

We get through a lot of towels in this house too. :)

Just had a vision of your dogs with there boots on made me chuckle but they do sound quite practical.

I know we laugh at them too but you will notice at the dog shows most people have boots on beardies!!
Have you ever seen the length of the fur on thier feet....

No great problems here. The garden is grassed - I'd never get rid of it, a garden isn't a garden if it hasn't got grass :D We're much like JG here - the dogs get towelled off in the back lobby. The kitchen floor is tiled, so the dogs stay in there until they are clean and dry, then they might be allowed out into the hall and study. If they are really clean, they can come into the lounge - but only in the evening :) I chose tiles for the kitchen that don't show the dirt and the floor gets washed once a week :) It's surprising how clean the floor stays as the dogs get walked in fields four times a day :D :D An aussie coat is my limit - I wouldn't have anything worse than that.

Daisy

I too have 7 large (hairy dogs) - all BSD - after many years trial and error this is what we find works best ;

No carpets - we have  a combination of slate flooring and stripped and varnished floor boards.

No grass in the dog run area - ours have an area about 40x30 ft which is fully paved and includes a run of 3 kennels and a soak away for washing down any muck into the drains. ( kennels always have the runs left open and they can go in or out except when the girls are in season)

A separate dog room ( large utility) where they stay until they have dried off.

A heavy duty Blaster to blow the dried mud off the coats before they are allowed into the rest of the house.

a fenced gravelled pathway to their excercise paddock (about 1 acre) this keeps them off the lawn and rest of the garden and means that they are not running through the mud each time they go out.

they are restricted to the Kitchen/utility/dog run area through the day and only allowed into the living room in the evening when we all settle down .

All the walls are painted white in washable paint so that we can simply re do the 'tidemark' that appears every spring at dog height ( being white it means that you don't have to redo the whole wall :D)

Good luck with the move Marianne - it will be so worth it when you get your doggy heaven !.

Yvonne

Till very recently I had a Staffy cross with short coat that wasn't any problem at all. We'd go out in the woods no matter what the weather was like and by the time we came back (by car) home she was already dry. I simply brushed her quickly before entering the house and you couldn't even notice she was out ;) . Now when it comes to our cars, that's a completely different story :( . I'm really embarrassed to give anyone a lift. We have it professionally cleaned almost every month, but that's how it is.......
When she only went out to do her business (as we can only afford long walks in the woods once a day), it was always me with her, so we'd come back to the house together and I simply washed her feet. Washing feet in the winter is a must in our country as we have a lot of snow and ice and they throw some sort of salt on the roads for it to stay clear.
Now with my other dog (a long coat Chihuahua) there's no problem at all. He HATES dirt, watter and mud, so he avoids it in every way possible. He wears a coat, so his nice white long coat is protected anyway ;) . He usually does his business in a couple of minutes and comes straight back in. You can't even notice he was out ;) ...... my good, good boy! LOL

I cordoned off a large area of the garden with flag stones to use in the winter months, so that my dogs do not go on my grass at all at this time of year. I have my dogs coats cut very short for winter.  I got rid of my carpets and put down laminate flooring. I turned my downstairs WC into a walk in shower. Living in the country I can not avoid muddy fields (and black,filthy dogs!) so we come in the back door after our walks, straight into the downstairs WC, my dogs will happily sit down and await their turn for a leg and underbelly shower, towel dry and quick brush, I can do all five dogs in about 15 mins now after each walk so it is a quick fast routine.

Once the dogs are dry which does not take long just being legs and underbelly, they are fresh and clean.  My visitors always say, they can't believe that I have no doggy odour in my home :-D  If I still had a carpet and grassy garden I think I would go crazy it was such hard work. I pray to the God who invented Laminate!!!  :P