Tips For Homemakers

My neighbor was telling me if you use green Palmolive dish detergent to wash your dog, it will kill fleas.  She actually said the fleas seem to explode.  Is that possible?

I usually use baby shampoo to wash my dogs. Fleas haven’t been a problem in the past years but I have noticed my dogs scratching more this year. It didn’t get very cold here in Florida this year so maybe the fleas didn’t get killed off.

She also said that you can put the Palmolive dish detergent in the Miracle Grow container and use the water hose, and spray your yard to kill fleas.

I haven’t tried this yet but I intend to try it. Anyone out there tried it besides my neighbor?

I made this scratching post last year with my daughter and yesterday I replaced the carpet because my cat had destroyed the carpet. He loves his scratching post and I love he isn’t scratching my furniture.

Fortunately, I live in the country and had all the necessary supplies to make this scratching post. So, it was basically free for me to make.

If you do not have the carpet, you can get a remnant piece of carpet at a local carpet store for just a few dollars.

These are the details of how I made the post. Of course, you can improvise.

You will need:

12 inch square 5/8 inch thick wood

12x 16 inch piece of carpet (thicker carpet is better)

2 ft long 4×4

2 ft plus 4 inches (28 inches) x 20 inch piece of carpet

20 nails.. (6 short nails going thru 5/8 inch wood)

hammer

carpet cutter or serrated knife

First, we will cover the base (12 inch board) with the 12 x 16 inch carpet. Lie the carpet upside down and center the 12 inch base board on it. Wrap the carpet around the board and leave the same amount of carpet on each side so the base will sit evenly. I nailed 3 shorts nails on each side of the carpet to attach it making sure the nail did not thru the other side.

Then I sat the 4×4 on its end. I centered the base board upside down (on top of the 4×4) so the wood side was facing me. I then nailed one long nail in the middle of the base board to attach the base to the 4×4. Once I verified that the base and 4×4 were centered, I nailed four more nails into the wooded base to secure the base to the 4×4.

Now flip the post over and you will have a carpeted base and a bare post. I guess you could carpet the two individual pieces and then nail them together but that’s not how I did it.

Next you are going to attach the carpet to the post. Stand the 20 x 28 inch carpet up next to the 24 inch post with the extra four inches extended at the top. Attach the carpet on one side by nailing one nail at the base and work your way up putting another nail in the center and then one up at the top of the board. It’s like wrapping a present. lol After I was sure I had it evenly wrapped, I added another two nails. Now pull the carpet around the 4×4 and overlap over the carpet. Again, start at the base and attach with a nail at the base. Pull the carpet tightly and attach a nail in the center.

Before I finished nailing the top nail, I cut the carpet that was extended at the top in order to make flaps to wrap across the top. I sliced each corner downward about 3 1/2 inches or so (until it will lie down on the top of the board). Now you can finish nailing the last nail on the side and fold the flaps over. I folded the four flaps over each other and then nailed two nails to keep it in place. Then I went back and secured the side with two  additional nails.

Make sure you hammer the nails in as deep as you can so your cat will not catch his nails on the nails. I nailed  the nails in so deep that you can barely see them. I used thick carpet.

Within two minutes my cat was scratching on the post. In fact, I have already taken the carpet off the post and replaced it.

Our dogs are outside dogs but I cannot help but feel sorry for them when they are in the driving rain. They have shelter but it seems two of them don’t want to get into the same shelter even though one shelter is 4×8 foot. Go figure.

A quick solution is to put up a (PUP, ha ha) tent. It was $17.96 for a 5×6 foot floor area. Two of the three dogs got into it immediately and took an afternoon nap. My third dog is older and just wants to be left alone so I am sure she will end up in the 4×8 ft shelter.

Even if you don’t want to use the tent as any type of permanent solution, it is great to have if you just need some shade when the trees lose their leaves.

Do your dogs dig? Pain in the butt, huh? Well, I went online and checked out different solutions and this is the one that worked for me.

We have two acres of land of which an acre of land is fenced-in for the dogs. We have fenced the border with field fencing and then cross-fenced the land so I have an area for the dogs, chickens and across the front and side is our yard for my plants.

Our dogs would dig in the same spots over and over along the fenceline and I kept filling the holes. They were getting out of their yard and sometimes would even get into my chicken yard.

The internet site I found said to take dog poop and bury it in the hole that the dog has dug. So refill the hole with dirt but put the poop about two inches from the top of the ground before you finish filling the hole. IT WORKS!!!

I wandered around the yard with a grocery bag on my left arm and a grocery bag on my right hand picking up the crap. Not a job I really enjoyed but would gladly do again now that I know it works. Funny thing is, they have almost totally stopped digging.

It was great to fill the holes that were about 20 feet away from my back door. I feared I would either twist my ankle or fall over. It doesn’t stink either because it is buried. My grass has started growing back and you can barely tell where they dug.

Another method I tried and it works, too but it was going to be very costly for the whole acre. I bought a 50 ft long fence that was 4 ft high and cut it in half so it was l00 feet long and two feet high. I bought the smaller hole fencing…maybe it is called pig fencing…not sure. It has rectangular holes that are about 2 inches by 4 inches maybe. Anyway, I put the fencing on the ground and attached it to the field fencing at the bottom. I used some kite string and also some wire (clothes hangers cut in three pieces) to attach it.

My chicken yard borders the dog yard. The chickens peck at the grass into the dog’s yard for about 6 inches (they have long since pecked all the grass out of their yard). Because the dogs saw bare dirt, they decided to dig there. So, I put the fencing on the ground (on the dog’s side) where the chicken yard and dog yard meet. That solved that problem. So anywhere there was a big area that they dug, I used the fencing on the ground. You can use tent stakes to make it lie down so the grass will grow thru it. Just make sure you knock the tent stake way into the ground so it is not sticking up. You also need to be really careful when you mow the lawn. I use the weed eater where the fencing is on the ground.

My husband recently ate at an outside restaurant and noticed a bag of water on each table. The bag was half full of water and tied up on a stand so it wouldn’t touch the table…so it could vibrate and wiggly. He was told it would keep the flies away. So to test the idea, we took a ziplock Baggie and filled it half full of water, made a small hole in the top and ran a kite string thru it. We attached it to the metal “knocker” on our back door. Our dog food on the back porch attracts flies. Guess what? After two weeks, I have only found one fly that slipped thru the doorway when I had it wide open. Kewl, huh?

My dogs are outside dogs. I feed them on the back porch but sometimes they don’t eat immediately. If I come back a hour or so later, their food is filled with #### ants. I have found if I take a square 8 x 8 pan of water with a little Dawn dish detergent in it and sit the bowl of dog food in it, the ants cannot get into the food. I know there are some dishes and stuff out there for sale that do the same thing, but my idea is a lot cheaper. Also, a side benefit: the palmetto bugs that are huge and plentiful in Florida and I find one or two of them occasionally in the soapy water in the morning. I hate those things.