Dog Proofing with a Staple Gun & Chicken Wire

For the last few weeks, Ollie has been driving me crazy. Every time I would let him out into the fenced-in area of our backyard to do his business, he would run under our sun room instead.

I think there might have been some bunny rabbits living under there, because one day a HUGE Ollie-sized rabbit came running out.

Hmmm… maybe they were making some sweet cross-species love?

Anyways, it got to the point where he didn’t want to do any business at all – other than hanging out in his hidden love shack. The tipping point was when we had a few days of rain… Ollie HATES baths and I hate having a muddy dog running around my house.

And it was quite muddy, because there wasn’t any grass under the porch. Or around the porch…

Instead of buying and installing some porch lattice, which is certainly one way of fixing the issue, we decided to work with what we had:

• 1 inch Poultry Netting left over from another project
• A staple gun and staples that I have used for pretty much EVERYTHING over the past 10 years
• A measuring tape
• A hammer (in case I needed to pry any staples out)
• Wire snips (not shown)

Step 1: While Ollie kept a close eye on him, Travis pulled out the random slabs of concrete that were stuffed under the deck. We have no idea why the last owners put them there, but we re-purposed them to block the skinny area by the back stairs (shown a few pictures down).

Step 2: We measured each space between wood columns and snipped the chicken wire to size.

Step 3: While holding the wire tight, I used the staple gun to secure each piece to wood.

Step 4: Travis added a few extra staples to keep the wire from pulling away from the house.

That’s it! It took us less than an hour and totally solved the issue of Ollie playing under the deck. We even left the shallow area open, in case there were little critters that needed to get in and out of the area.

Unless you look closely, you can hardly tell that the chicken wire is there at all. Ollie knows though, and totally stares through the holes with longing at his bunny wife. Or husband. I’m not really sure of Ollie’s sexual orientation.

I guess now we need to deal with the whole lack o’ grass thing going on…

Have you needed to do some random animal proofing around your house? Do you have a dog in love with a bunny rabbit?