When the porch
turns cold
The first cool morning, the dog is the happiest thing on the place. Give it three weeks. A porch dog handles cold better than you think and damp worse than you think — and the fall list is short.
Dry beats warm, here too
Start hereWe said it about the chickens and it holds for the dog. A healthy, grown dog with a real coat is built for a cool night. What wears a dog down is not the number on the thermometer. It is lying on something cold and hard, in a wind, with a wet coat. Fix the surface, the wind and the damp, and most dogs want nothing else from you until it is properly cold.
Most dogs is not all dogs. The short-coated ones, the small ones, the puppies, and the old boy who gets up slower every year do not have the same furnace, and they tell you so: they shiver, they curl tight, they stand at the door and look at you. Believe them. A porch dog is a dog that chooses the porch, not one that is left on it. When it freezes, the door opens.
Everything below can be done in a morning, and most of it you already own.
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01 · The bed: off the boards, out of the wind
The one thing to buy
Same bed as summer, different job
The raised cot,
moved to the wall
Porch boards and concrete pull the heat out of a dog all night long. Getting the dog a few inches off the floor is most of the fix, and the raised cot from the bed guide already does it. In July the air under it kept the dog cool. In October, shove it against the house wall on the side away from the wind and it keeps the dog off the cold instead. If the mesh has sagged or torn over the summer, a replacement cover costs a fraction of a new bed.
In a dog house or an open shed, bed it with straw. Straw sheds water and stays loose. A blanket soaks up damp, packs flat and is cold by midnight. Blankets are for the dog that sleeps inside.
A stiff dog needs more under the hips than a cot. That is the one case where we would pay for the thick foam bed, and it lives indoors.
Wind matters more than walls. A dog house should be just big enough for the dog to turn around in, because the dog is the heater and a big house is a lot of air to heat. Turn the door away from the weather, get the floor up off the ground on a couple of blocks, and hang a flap of old feed sack over the opening. That is the whole renovation.
Feed goes up a little, too. A dog that lives outside burns more in cold weather just keeping warm. If the ribs start to show under a winter coat, the dog needs more in the pan. How much more is a fair question for the vet at the fall visit.
02 · Water, before it freezes
The eight-dollar fixDogs drink less when it is cold and need it just the same. The first hard freeze is when you find out what your water bowl is made of. A ceramic crock cracks. A steel bowl holds a block of ice you cannot get out without a kettle. A rubber feed pan is the answer the barn worked out a long time ago: when it freezes, turn it over, step on it, and the ice falls out in one piece. Fill it back up. That is the whole system, and it will outlast the dog.
Set it where the morning sun hits, out of the wind, and check it when you feed. On a freezing morning, snow and a frozen pan do not count as water.
03 · Ticks have not read the calendar
The one people drop too earlyThe first cold snap makes everybody relax about ticks, and that is a mistake. Some of them are busiest in the fall, and they are out on any winter day that gets above freezing. A dog that runs the fence line and the leaf litter in October is right where they are waiting.
So the summer habit stays. Run your hands over the dog when it comes in — ears, armpits, between the toes, under the collar. If you find one, the little twister hook gets it out whole, and a flea comb will tell you in thirty seconds whether anything else is riding along. Whatever preventive your vet has the dog on, do not stop it because the calendar says October. Ask the vet when, or whether, to stop. Where we live the answer is usually never.
Fall is also burr season. Cockleburs and beggar’s lice mat into a long coat and pull the skin underneath. Comb them out the same evening, before they felt in. The whole summer argument is in the flea and tick guide, and it still applies.
04 · The dark, the shed and the woods
The part that actually hurts dogsThe cold is not what gets most dogs in the fall. These three are.
Antifreeze. This is the month it comes out of the shed, and it is sweet. A dog will lick a puddle of it off the floor, and a small amount can kill one. Wipe up every drip, keep the jug capped and up on a shelf, and look under the truck. If you even think the dog got into it, that is a call to the vet right then, not in the morning.
Rat bait. The mice move indoors when it turns cold, the bait goes down in the barn, and the dog finds it. Use a trap or a locked bait station the dog cannot open, and tell whoever is watching the place where every one of them is.
The dark, and the season. It is dark by supper now, and the dog is the same color as the road. A reflective collar costs almost nothing, and a headlamp on a nail by the door means you will actually walk out and check. And it is hunting season. A dog loose in the woods in November wears blaze orange, the same as you do. The dates for Mississippi are on the deer season page at the farm.
The other guides
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