I love the green roof dog houses at Sustainable Pet, but I can’t afford to spend $3000 on a dog house. Instructables comes to the rescue again!
Check out this brilliant Do-It-Yourself Green Roof Veranda (less a house and more of a covered deck.) It has thorough instructions and lots of helpful photos with notes. You can do this! If you use pressure treated lumber, make sure you get a safe version, or use naturally rot-resistant wood like cedar or cypress, or use plastic lumber.
I really like this design! It has a good over-hang so your pup will be well shaded and the floor is well away from the drain holes in the roof, so your pup will stay dry too. The elevated floor will keep your pet cooler and keep them away from bugs. You can easily put a blanket or a pad on the floor to give your dog more cushioned spot to hang out. And the Green Roof Veranda will look great in your garden.
So what’s so cool about green roofs? They:
- provide thermal and sound insulation
- reduce rain run-off
- are aesthetically appealing
- reduce energy use
- absorb CO2
- reduce heat islands
As I said in the post on the green roof dog houses you can buy, the Green Roof Veranda won’t save the planet by itself, but it can start the conversation, it can serve as a small scale trial for a larger green roof, and it can give your dog a comfy place to relax when she’s outside.
Find out a lot more about green roofs at GreenRoofs.org.
Check out these great instructions for a beefy cat scratching post/cat tree. It’s a no-frills, utilitarian design, but it looks easy to build and that it will last forever. You can make it fancier by painting the shelf supports and by the color carpet you use to cover the shelves. And if you don’t cover the center post in sisal, you could paint it too.
You will need a drill, a saw, and a good staple gun (I recommend an electric one to make sure you get the staples sunk deep.) And be sure to stagger the shelves and make them large enough that your cat can actually climb the tree.
Don’t miss these previous posts on a DIY cat tree and a DIY scratching post.
We and our pets know those Elizabethan or lampshade collars are the pits. Here’s a handy do-it-yourself alternative for protecting an incision or wound site on your pet’s torso from Instructables. You’ll find good instructions for making a body sock or “cat jacket” out of an old t-shirt.
This could also be used on dogs, rabbits, ferrets, etc. It might not be enough to stop an obsessive pet from messing with their stitches, but I think it would work with a lot of pets. A side benefit could be that wearing this body sock might help curtail their activity, which is another post-surgery need. Try it out!
Check out these other alternatives to Elizabethan collars:
Make your own hidden litter box cabinet. You can camouflage you cat’s litter box and make it match your other furniture.
These instructions are pretty good, but you will need some knowledge about the use of power tools. And you’ll need something like a jig saw to cut the opening. The design includes a wire platform made from an inverted wire basket to help get cat litter off your kitty’s feet. My cats wouldn’t like how open the grid is on the wire platform, so I would use something like a wire cooling rack (for baking) that has a smaller grid. Or you can leave the wire platform off.
(Note to subscribers: There was a technical glitch after an upgrade and not everyone was getting email notices of new posts. This should be fixed now.)
This sleek, wall-mounted scratching post by Wowbow is pretty nifty. I couldn’t find the Skritch for sale anywhere—the UK online store doesn’t seem to working. Too bad.
Still, I thought it might give you DIY-ers some ideas. It would be pretty easy to wrap a heavy-duty cardboard tube with sisal carpet. The only trick would be finding something attractive to mount the post on the wall. Ideas anyone?
A minimalist scratching post could go almost anywhere and look nice—not to mention it would make your felines happy. I like that it doesn’t take up floor space.
Check out the thumbnail to see how it looks with different colored sisal.
I really like this design! It has a good over-hang so your pup will be well shaded and the floor is well away from the drain holes in the roof, so your pup will stay dry too. The elevated floor will keep your pet cooler and keep them away from bugs. You can easily put a blanket or a pad on the floor to give your dog more cushioned spot to hang out. And the Green Roof Veranda will look great in your garden.
