To Kennel or not to Kennel?

our setup is....
we have a doggie door that was installed in one of our side doors...it leads out of a tiled storage room with a sink...
outside the doggy door leads to kennel. It has a thick cement floor and fulling fenced in with a roof over it.
so two parts of the sides are the side of the house and the other two sides are chain link fence. then a angled roof over it...
There is a gate/door that locks and leads out to the yard when WE open it lol. Our yard is fenced in but would never want a doggy door that leads to the yard directly. so we have full control over when the dogs get to go in the yard...but they definately never just stay in there...they hop into the kennel when they want...they will bark at people going by but not too bad. we have never had a complaint.
here are the best pictures I have....maybe Ill take more...but for now this is what I have to show



okay i couldnt find much...Ill go take some better pictures of the roof etc.

ok I got a bunch of more pictures....we now have a couple tarps...In the winter we keep tarps over the whole thing...in the summer we keep them on a couple sides...
The cats like to sit out there too...they will go through the doggy door and they can't fit through the bottom or the edge of the gate...so we have had their litter boxes out there and that works great too! lol.
My dad built all of it...and the house too hehe...and he built the little wooden railing to seperate the litter boxes from the dogs...
I took so many pictures of it...I get snap happy. lol.
and I think it is about the size you mentioned...6X12 feet...I know its 6 ft wide not sure the length but it looks like it could be 6ft doubled.

yeah the dogs dont go in the yard which is fully fenced without us out their with them too...
they can just hop out to the kennel...but only duchess hops out their to go potty and they will both hop out if they hear something...but they dont bark excessively at all...otherwise they dont go out there to lay in the sun or lounge ever...which surprises me.
Coco doesnt know or want to go potty in the kennel...so we still have to let him out into the yard and pooper scoop the yard otherwise its nice to know that Duchess doesnt feel couped up if no one is home later than expected...

It's funny whenever I let the dogs out to play in the yard...but thats where coco goes potty lol so I see duchess sprint out there and take a pee lol I think its just cause she thinks she is missing out by not being able to do her business in the yard lol.

thanks guys! Lyngr Id like to see a picture too...I can't quite picture what your talking about exactly.
we have a swing on our front porch...and I thought it would be neat if we could close off the entrance with some kind of latched gate...so if we want to sit on the porch the dogs can be out too...

Mandysblackroses, is a fully fenced in yard an option for you??? I think a kennel with a cement floor so they cant dig is handy if you have people over and if its nice enough to stay outside for a bit...and the seperate double might be handy too cause with them being siblings maybe you wont want to leave them alone together...but fenced in yard is a great help just for the dogs and your enjoyment.

Can you please send your dad to my house???

Click to expand...

haha he enjoys side jobs like those lol he is actually an automechanic but got a "Crew" to build the house...and its amazing he can build anything he wants lol. If you saw that picture with Duchess on the swing...he built that swing too

bump for Mariposa & Lapdog....


I finally got a pic of my pen area:

You can see there is also a baby gate leaning against the glass slider in case we want to keep the dogs on the deck (the pen are gets muddy when it rains)