GIMME SHELTER

Whether you have a single Borzoi, a pair, or a kennel full, a good plan for indoor and outdoor
management of your Zois is essential for enjoying them.  This article is based on my own kennel
facilities and observations on others I have visited.  There are many caring owners whose dogs
have really great setups, combining indoor climate controlled luxury, paved or graveled area for
easy cleanup, and nice grassy areas for romping.  Sometimes home owners feel that to live in a
kennel is a second class life, but I am sure some Borzoi would prefer the nice turnout areas at a
kennel to life  in a 500 crate for 10 hours, and a quick walk on a leash on city pavement.  Kennel
owners need to ensure good shelter and quality time, pet people enough exercise in a controlled
area free of traffic hazards.  A good balance will make your dog happy, healthy, and well-
exercised.  Young Borzoi in particular definitely need an environment with enough exercise space, 
while as they get elderly, a cozy home and short walks are adequate to their needs.

The most professional setup I saw was at Blackmoor.  A large utility building had one side for
property maintenance, the other for the dogs.  There was a complete dog washing setup, a
laundry, special pens for whelping, washrooms, a series of indoor-outdoor runs, all easy to hose
down.  All fencing was six foot.  On the exterior, the pens were graveled, and opened at the far
end into a very large grassy turnout area.  Beyond this acreage was a turnout area used for older
puppies.  Use was made of a multi-car garage for dogs with special needs.  One advantage of this
setup was that dogs could be turned out for exercise in different combinations at will.  It required
someone to attend to this daily, but if the owners were away, there was still enough outdoor
space for exercise for a weekend.

Other large kennels have used boarding setups to take care of the needs of dogs for grooming,
whelping litters, and so forth, and keep the Borzoi entirely out of doors, with groups of them in
pens, with group or single dog structures, usually wooden.  Outdoor pens varied in size.  The
largest I know of was 14 acres.  This is too large to visually check the fence line, and a nasty
escape occurred, as usual, resulting in the death of the most valuable dog.  I would be inclined to
advise unless the owner has secured the bottom of the fence in a profession manner that a pen
should not be so big as not to check it for dig out attempts daily.

If your pen or group of pens is not attached to a structure for shelter, you will have the labour of
moving dogs by leash, which is one of our problems at Rokaro for one area.  If you live in the
hotter parts of North America, unless your pens are in shade, you will need to have a building air-
conditioned for the hottest part of the year.  The system of pens partly in the cool section, partly
out of doors, plus a turnout area can work well.  Your indoor section can be a converted garage. 
If you design such a setup, be sure you can get the dogs into their turnout area from a central
core, so as not to have to lead them through each other's pens, a problem if you have bitches in
season.  If your turnout area is grassed, as most are, you need to plan for getting a lawn mower
into it.  If you have snow gates, you will need a lightweight mower that can be lifted over.

Shade problems include storms dropping trees on your fence line.  This has caused the death of a
number of Borzoi either by electrocution, trees falling on them, or dogs going over the fence. 
There is no foolproof solution.  If you don't have trees, and use shade covers, bad windstorms
will rip these away and blow them to a distance.  A possible solution is building an area off the
ground with 4 x 4 posts and some sort of a roof.  Do not rely on a wooden dog house providing
shade, as the interior will heat up to a degree that the dog can get heat stroke.  Borzoi are very
prone to dig under dog houses to get cool.  You might start out by laying down patio stones or a
cement pad to prevent this.  In snowy areas, put down skids, as otherwise the floor will
deteriorate and snow or rain get in the door.  Doors should be oriented away from the prevailing
winds.  I can offer no solution to people with shaded pens other than what I do, which is to bring
the dogs indoors if electrical or windstorms strike.  If you are away working, there may be no
answer.  Tornadoes and violent storms are a definite hazard, and even destroy homes, as well as
kennels.  Keep your eye on the weather in the months when these storms prevail.  Some of us
have severe winter storms, that bring drifts enough to allow dogs to escape, and extra care can be
needed.  Keep sand on hand for ice storms, as a number of Borzoi have been hurt on slippery
surfaces.

Flooring in outdoor houses is important.  We had good results by cutting a heavy rubber material
for cows or horses into the required sizes.  This also works for indoor kennel sections as well. 
Although fairly expensive, it has been totally chewproof here and a permanent solution to keeping
the dog insulated on a wooden or cement floor. There are several other materials that I have seen
used.  Carpet scraps will get wet, and can be dragged out, often breaking any swinging door.  We
use straw that can be frequently changed as bedding in the outdoor wooden houses, often with the
rubber matting underneath it.  If you use this type of bedding, build a door for cleaning at one end
of your dog house, to rake out the straw.  Put a hook on this door, and then you can hook it open
when it is hot in the daytime, and bolt it shut at night or in cool conditions.  This is not the door
the dogs will use, which should be small enough to retain heat, but large enough for your largest
dog to enter.

I prefer to have my dogs on washable acrylic blankets.  Most of our dogs are outside with the
wooden houses, and then are led in at night, to sleep in cubicles with a blanket for each dog, in a
crate with a blanket, or loose in the house.  Unfortunately, you will find using this type of bedding
a problem in indoor-outdoor setups.  Borzoi are clever, and will carry their nice blankets outside
to lie on.  The blankets will get wet, dirty, soiled, and frozen down.  We eliminate this in the
section of the kennel with indoor-outdoor runs by dropping the doors at night.  This minimizes
ruining blankets, as the dogs are in the turn out areas for a lot of the day.  It also keeps them quiet
at night, which is important as we have close neighbours on one side of the acreage. Whatever
bedding is used should be able to be washed off, changed in the case of straw, or laundered as in
blankets or light rugs.  Heavy carpet can't be cleaned, and I know of dogs who have died eating
pieces of it.

Feeding the troops is easily done with feeders with swinging doors. The dogs open the door with
their nose, and can feed at will all day long, minimizing chances of bloat from eating heavy meals.
These feeders come in several sizes, and should be filled in proportion to the number of dogs and
appetites, to prevent the food going stale in summer. I would allow a feeder for four dogs. In the
southern Ontario climate, bucket heaters are essential, and work very well. You will have to
design a layout where you can feed the power cords without having the dogs chew on them.
Filling the buckets is easy for some if you have a water supply handy. If not, we use empty plastic
containers from kitty litter, which work well, and are the right size for one pail. The pails are held
to the fence with double ended snaps, brass being best. We have found electrical strapping good
for holding the feeders the right height off the ground. If you have dogs that overeat, you will
have to group them in one area, and feed them in their indoor accommodation at night. We feed
puppy mush in several large flat pans, and find them very smart at switching to the feeders as soon
as they go on dry food. For feeding your individual dogs in indoor pens, we have found stainless
steel buckets best, as they can be attached at a nice height off the ground, with a double ended
snap, and are easily cleaned. They work well for water supply as well, and we also use plastic
pails where two dogs share a run.

If your indoor housing is not just portable panels similar to outdoor fencing, and you are using a
converted building, we found a great idea was to build the pens with tops.  These have proved
excellent for storage off the ground, and are very handy for all sorts of equipment.  Some pens
have wire separating the dogs, and some have wooden walls.  The doors are wood frame with
wire, which provided a place to hang the pails plus ventilation.  You will need to provide some
area where you can keep  heated, for storage of items that would spoil by freezing.  We store
food in plastic garbage pails with tight lids, and keep a cat on duty.  He has every luxury and kitty
litter, and has lived happily with Borzoi for ten years.

Indoor management of Borzoi varies with owners.  Some keep them in one part of the house, to
keep the cleaning down.  We use large high thread count sheets to cover the furniture, and do
allow them on it.  If your Borzoi is a bed buddy, buy an extra matching sheet to throw over the
bedding, again making cleanup easy.  We control their access with baby gates, and although they
could jump them, they can easily be kept out of the dining room when people are eating, out of
the kitchen when we are cooking, and kept from running up and down the hall.  When they are off
outside, the gates are parked.  One kennel owner I know had a row of crates at the end of her
living room, and they went to bed there.  Carpets cleaners advise that putting down something for
the dogs to lie on is better than letting them lie on your broadloom.  Fortunately, the luxury loving
Borzoi also prefer those nice fleecy pads, cushions, or cuddle baskets.  All of these can be
washed, while your carpeting can only stand so much shampooing.  There is a new line of pens
made of plastic posts that look quite nice in the corner of a room.  If you have only a dog or two,
you can easily find some attractive confinement area that will fit into your decor.  If you have an
indoor outdoor swinging door, you will need to lay carpet for wet paws as they come in.

If you only have a Borzoi or two and go out to work, many people have made a great setup at the
back of a garage, with a door so that the dogs can go out during the day.  They can rejoin the
family when everyone comes home from work.  If you are a garden lover, put a gravel run down
one side of your yard for pottie time and when you are away.  Then when home, the dogs can join
you in the large yard, and be supervised against eating your plants or falling in the pool.

Fence fighting is a problem in some areas, with neighbour's dogs or between your own. I would
advise using a solid board fence if it is a neighbour problem. Borzoi can rip off shadow board
easily. Secure the lower part of the fence with either buried wire, patio stones, or railway ties, as
motivated Borzoi are probably more likely to dig out to fight than jump over 6 feet. We solved it
at the kennel by putting all the Borzoi and our other smaller sighthounds in one run. Bitches in
heat are kept up in the house and turned out into a paved yard behind the garage. In our other
area, we created a walkway between the groups of pens. This wasted about 48 feet of fence
panels, but has almost eliminated running the fence. One side is for puppies, and as some adults
will bite at them through the wire, this protects them. The other sections (5) allow separation of
combatant by another pen. Think about this when you lay out your kennel, as a good plan will
cut fighting and barking to almost nothing. Isolation of bitches in season is another commonsense
solution. Remember love lends wings! A really good idea I gained by visiting Windhounds
kennel was a safety area. If you have more than one dog, a gate that opens out into any
dangerous situation can be proofed by sectioning off a little area. Aatis created his to get the
lawnmower in and out. Our large pen (50 x 100) has 6 x 50 sectioned off at one end. It not only
keeps the dogs safe when we take out a few at a time, but has seating so that in good weather it is
great for grooming them. It is large enough to turn out visitor's dogs for a break, and to separate
a dog from the others if necessary. Because of the unusual layout of the kennel on a property
divided by ponds and a creek, with a road down to a bridge leading to the barn, there is no way of
attaching this compound to the house. Dogs come and go on leashes, and these are stored in this
safety area in a plastic tool box to keep them dry. A safety section will also give you an area for
your cleaning equipment. We use plastic garbage cans lined with plastic bags with tight lids, and
these can be parked in this area. Night lighting for this area is good, especially with motion
detectors, as it is handy when night falls early in the winter.

Dog houses for Borzoi need to be well away from your fence line or they will be a springboard for
escape artists.  We like to build ours of 4 x 8 sheets of plywood, a house needing at least 5 sheets. 
We slope the roof to let rain and snow slide off, and build a dog door and a cleaning door on
them.  Such a house will hold three adults.  We have provided the dogs with large houses and
several one dog houses, so that they can be alone or with others.   Our dogs love to sit on these
houses, so if you are building one, don't make the slope extreme. In the winter they snuggle up
with each other, and in the heat, some prefer to be alone.  I like runs with some gravel and some
grass, as Borzoi often like to lie on the grass.  This pen is large enough to allow some of each.

However you manage your Borzoi, put yourself in their place...they need company, climate
control, room to get up some speed, and protection from traffic, thieves, and dangerous animals.
If they are happy, safe, well-fed out of doors, they will be quiet congenial friends when you come
home to them.  Do not leave them for hours in a crate if you can design something better for
them.  You would not like to be locked up all day, and with a little creativity, you can design a
safe and pleasant outdoor facility in which to pass some of their day.  If you are a kennel owner
using the livestock theory of dog management...think it over.  You may not be able to bring every
dog in every day or night, but dog proof your house, and rotate them in to be with the folks. 
Your kennel should not be a concentration camp for dogs, but a balance of outdoor play facilities
and indoor companion time.    If you have a great idea for improving Borzoi facilities, send it to
me, and we will publish the contributions at a later date.