Easter is a good time for washing dog beds

This is a good time to look at the outdoor facilities for your dog. When the warmer weather comes along and you have some time around the Easter holidays, it is a perfect time to arrange the kennels in the garden and make sure everything is good. The garden will be looking a bit tired right now, but you know it will soon spring in to action when the grass starts growing and the weeds are trying their best to win over the grass for sun, water and space. Before the big weeding jobs begin, you can pay the kennels and the dog beds some attention. If you already have kennels, in which your dog has been living, perhaps just during your working day or only during the night, it is nice to perform a good old spring cleaning. The dog beds might look pristine, but they will probably be a little bit smelly. If you have a Tuffies waterproof bed with one of the machine washable covers on it, you can take the covers off and simply bong it in the machine with any detergent you like. At the recommended 40 degrees wash, they come up like new.

It is also nice, on a sunny spring day to wash out the kennels thoroughly and air it all while the dog beds are also drying out. In our kennels there is always lots of leaves that have been blowing in and there are dry dirt from all the mud that the dogs drag in from running round the wet grass via their paws. With the lovely washable dog beds and washable covers, this is no problem while it happens because the dogs are not feeling wet or damp, but over time, this all dries up to dust and needs cleaning out. I also usually find weird and funny things in the corners of the kennels and once I found the mummified body of a black bird. I know my dogs won’t eat a black bird if it has hit the window and died in the garden. I have seen a bird out there, untouched for days till I remove it from the lawn, but obviously one of the dogs, probably the young one, has picked it up to have a closer inspection in ‘’privacy’’ on the waterproof dog beds inside the kennel only to conclude that it was not edible.

If you feed raw food like I do, and I mean proper raw food like whole deer-heads, you will find various remains like teeth and jaws from the deer or the odd femur which the dogs have given up on. All this needs to be chucked out in the cleaning process.

It is a lovely feeling to put all the clean and fresh waterproof dog beds back in to a clean kennel as part of the spring cleaning. Usually I will do the same in preparation for winter when the autumn arrives. But for now, let’s enjoy the warm spring time and get the doggies nice and tidy.

I have been on spring grouse count and found this little Easter bunny that the young dog managed to point.