Dog-Sanctuary in Full Operation!

The "Dog Land" has become a happy, healthy, and actively fun place for dogs and humans alike. Though it's still mostly natural landscape, rock formations, and natural flora with a lot of big fruit trees (Avocado, Mango, and Banana for starters), the large patio we work under and spend 90% of time on our Dog Land currently is comfortable for hanging out, relaxing in the hammock, spending time on the computer (like I am right now), or just playing with the dogs. And this week, I hear we'll have electricity installed to the grid.

We have human visitors coming on the near daily, from around the lake, and even now from all over the world; either to see the dogs as visitors or stay and help out. I have lots of new work-away volunteers coming to the Sanctuary monthly, often from European countries, keeping us full-staffed and with lots of help to take care of our large pack and daily chores. If my count is correct, we have 25 dogs here on Dog Land now. There are about 8 upstairs in our rental with the current 2 work-away volunteers, so it's hard for me to get the count exact. We also got a new puppy today!

I am really comfortable hanging out on Dog Land daily. I sleep here most of the time, because until construction on the cabin is complete, there is no technical indoor sleeping space on Dog Land yet, and it's hard to ask volunteers to stay down here all night. So I do it, for the time being, building the cabin and making this place so comfortable people will be knocking down our doors to stay with the dogs overnight on Dog Land, in a cozy cabin.

Updates on the Build-A-Cabin fundraiser:

Things have been going amazing with our fundraiser!

First, here's how it looks so far:

I made an estimation of budget of $1500 USD for all materials, and so far we are looking great on cost/accomplishment. In just 2 weeks, We raised $606.75 / $1,500 as I write this, making us quite close to the halfway-mark of hitting our goal. With what we've raised so far, I already bought and assembled all of the roofing material for the cabin, the wood of the cabin's frame, using different kinds of nails appropriate for the different material, and cut the lamina into size and even around trees to "build the house into the landscape", rather than have to cut down any extra trees.

This cabin will be in a "permaculture" style, where we build around the land and use what is present rather than destroy it to make "perfect box-sized homes". There will be two trees that will be living inside the cabin, and grow out of the roof undisturbed by the structure. They may need extra watering to continue to grow well, but the ground all around gets soaked with rain so this remains to be seen.

Here are some pictures of it in the early stages: