05/31/2026
We're resharing a post of ours about fencing today;
A lot of our dogs require a physical barrier fence. However, we think this is frequently interpreted incorrectly. While a large fenced area is nice, for most of our dogs, it isn’t a necessity. In most cases, we require physical fences for safety issues. Many of the dogs we get are rather high flight risks due to a lack of human bonding (they come to us from outside breeding situations or as feisty adolescents who were unable to properly with their original families). We require a fence not for exercise, but because we know it's likely that, if they got loose, they would run away rather than towards a human. That isn’t to say leash walks aren’t great, but we don’t recommend them when the dogs are first placed.
Which leads us to the point of this post. Fenced in areas are not required to be big. Alys and Gwen, pictured here, have a potty yard of approximately 10x25, but it it wouldn’t have to be that big. In all honesty, they generally use only about half of it to play in (and due to their major flight risk, they do not get any leash walks). They much prefer to be inside anyway.
Some of the younger dogs would do better with a a larger area, but in general, when we say you must have a fenced yard we don’t mean that the whole thing needs to be fenced. Kennel panels work great, and we have placed dogs into situations where a chain link kennel was put up purposefully for use while the dog bonded to their new family.
So, to that end, keep in mind that, when we say a fenced in area is required, we don't generally mean that your whole yard has to be fenced, just some of it.
Ps. The solar lights in Gwen and Alys's pen are made by LITOM and they're incredible!
