Soon after we got our first snowfall, it became plainly, and painfully, obvious that we would need to put up our fence immediately - the snow was making the puppies go hog wild! No longer did they stay in our yard (not that they always did but it was much worse now), but rather they ran like prison inmates on escape around the neighborhood, our neighbors standing in their doorways yelling and pointing, “this way”, “no, that way”, “coming your way now”, “no, headed back through that yard”, and so on and so on until we could finally lure them back home with puppy treats. Once in containment a few disciplinary words would roll off our tongues…until they would crack a smile on our faces with their puppy dog eyes and any sort of discipline was shot to hell.

So, several weeks ago we (”we” being Ben) began the gruelling task of digging post holes - the old-fashioned way, with a manual post hole digger. No easy task in these here parts of CO where the ground is like solid rock. Then, a couple weeks later, we (”we” includes me this time) recruited the help of our neighbors to pour the cement and set the posts. Finally came the time to start nailing it all together, and with ambitious determination Ben, myself and once again our obliging and generous neighbors got the thing done in 2 days, despite the snow on the ground and the freezing, finger-numbing temperatures. Now our backyard is complete…well, almost. It took several months but the yard has gone through a huge transformation - from nothing but dirt, to trenches for the sprinkler system, to mulch and rock beds, to grass, to working sprinklers, to trees, shrubs and flowers…and now, a fence. Good thing we only had to build one side of 3 to complete the fence - the contractors built one side (long story) for us and the back side was already there, which left us with just one side to do ourselves - otherwise Haka and Kohi might still be running hog wild through the neighborhood.

-Meredith