www.wayeh.com, Wayeh Malamutes, Sleddog Rescue Kennels

Clean the kennel

If you use new or used block, you're going to want to really scrub it clean, plus all the things you put in the kennel -- before you let a dog, a pregnant mom, or a puppy on the kennel.  New blocks have a very gritty, corrosive dust on them, and used blocks... well, you can guess what might be on them.

Our normal kennel cleaning routine involves Joy Green Tea Aromatic Release dishwashing soap.  We suds them up in all the buckets, on the beds, in wading pools, in the plastic dog houses, and then dump on the kennel block.  Since you placed the kennel next to water, you'll have a hose handy for starting in the uphill corner and washing all the blocks all the way down the kennel to the far end.

You'll get a chance to see where the dips are as well.  You can take an oversized flat screwdriver and pry up low blocks and put a few gravels in and then replace the block to fill in any dips.

And you'll get to see what the water runoff pattern will be in a rain storm.  Now is the time to fix drainage problems -- before the dogs are moved in.

Then once we have suds and hosed off every inch, we refill the buckets with water and bleach, dump them over the same block and do not rinse.  Then refill the water buckets one last time with fresh drinking water.