Gigi, one of our dogs, got a lot of "personal" things today!

Gigi got an actual mattress put into her huge crate today.  I tried to find something to put in there on the floor of her crate in every possible store and online.  But there apparently just aren't very many crates that measure almost the size of an actual twin bed like that one does!  So I couldn't even find anything big enough to cover that whole floor.  So we decided to take that twin bed mattress that was out on the back porch when the cats used to be out there the last couple years.  Because they layed on it all the time, I wouldn't want to use that mattress for people.  But hey -- it has finally been perfectly cleaned up, so we got Jerry to help us cut the end off of it while he was here working today.  So now it can fit into her crate.  And hey -- it works perfectly! 

See -- here it is when I put it in there.  But since it's an actual mattress that can't be folded up at all, I had to open the end of that crate -- not easy -- in order to get it in since it couldn't get just put in through that door.  But I'm really glad we have it in there now because it can't move around at all so it works really really well for her!

Actually, that crate is a bit wider than a twin bed,
so I rolled up a little narrow red rug and stuck it in over on that right side
so that Gigi couldn't accidentally get her foot stuck down over that side.  

Gigi has been really good about not digging apart a little rug that I had put into her crate over the last couple months.  So I put that little rug on top of the mattress and then I brought her in to see what she thought about it.  Well, as it turned out, when she went into the crate she walked around it for just a couple seconds then she layed down and went to sleep immediately!  Great!  I guess I'll get some sort of twin bed water-proof cover and put that on it before it begins to storm outside again.  That way if she comes in with muddy feet that mattress won't get messed up.  I'll be able to remove the cover and wash it once that mud happens but it's incredibly difficult to take out the mattress itself so really need that instead.  I'll be going to buy it tomorrow!  No problem.

Gigi's a pretty good size, but she has plenty of space to sleep in that crate.
She really likes it in there.  When she comes inside she races right into her crate!

Then Jerry and Mark also got the new heater that we bought a few weeks back that's meant to be put into the top of a garage if you want to work out there in the winter.  So they installed that up near the ceiling on Gigi's porch so that if she's outside in the winter and we're not home to bring her in or whatever, she won't be freezing out there.  

It's getting near to spring down here now, though, so I won't bother doing it this year, but next fall I guess I'll figure out how to close in those windows so that the heat will be even MORE helpful.  Now they've just got screens - no glass or anything. But I guess we could close them in with plastic or something through the winter.  Hmm -- if that's cheaper than actual glass windows anyway.

We had a heater inside that smaller crate there on the right,
but that doesn't really work all that well.
Glad to have that better heater up there on top now.

Well, we also need to do a lot of cleaning up that porch as well because as she grew up from puppyhood she jumped up and barked out the window sills and even chewed on them! She doesn't do that anymore, though, so we need to clean them all up and probably repaint them as well.  

Well -- there's always SOMETHING that needs to be done around this place.  Always!   But hey -- since we're retired, if it weren't for all those things we probably wouldn't bother to do much of anything and that wouldn't be good for us at all. So, it's good we have ALL those animals, huh?