Sled Dog Houses - Thaw Project | Life Below Zero

What I got here is I got some plywood, some rough cut 2x4s. I'm going to start laying this out. My goal here is to be efficient with my materials; you know, try to make my dog houses out of one sheet of plywood per dog.

When winter comes, you got to constantly maintain your dog's houses, clean them out once a week. I'm trying to set the house up to where it's easy to do that—very functional. I need the door up high so the straw stays in there and they're not dragging the straw out.

So to finish that up, I use a handsaw; that way, I keep a nice clean cut. I got a feeling that the dogs are going to be pretty excited about this. This is the time of year you got to get everything done in Alaska because winter's coming. You can smell it in the air, the fir weeds starting to lose all its flowers and bloom, so the time's coming that the dogs got to have houses—they got to be dry.

Okay, what I'm going to do next is get my 2x4s measured out and cut, and I'm going to slap one together, make sure my design is sound. I don't ever really go off a plan or a blueprint; I just got it in my mind what I want to do. It's just playing with numbers and laying things out. These are the pieces that I will use to line the roof and the floor with, so everything will firmly attach—just ties it in structurally with my plywood that I have.

I have to think to be efficient and plan out my usage of my wood. I got the stack of wood; that's what I got. I don't want to have a lot of waste for building dog houses; you know, I view it as just a simple thing like building a smokehouse. It's built to shelter the dog; it's not a piece of artwork.

Building a doghouse is not necessarily permanent, but you know if you take good care of them, they could last 5, 6 years. Dog house number one. [Music] Ginger, what you doing? Ginger, is it your house? Good! Give the dog house to the dog. She's in it right away; she must like it.

Back to it, just getting [Music] started.