What do you do with leftover construction materials? Build dog houses, of course!
Students in Sara Laudenbach’s Project Lead the Way (PLTW) course at North Junior High School built sheds last spring for their service learning project. They built one shed for the school and will now sell additional sheds to help buy supplies for future projects.
“I try to incorporate some type of service learning with the yearlong class,” says Laudenbach. “At least one of their projects is given to somebody else.”
However, there was a lot of scrap material left from last year’s project, so Laudenbach tasked her students to come up with ideas to repurpose the remaining materials for this year’s service project.
Two of Laudenbach’s students, Ella Anderson and Haven Fahey, thought of the idea to build dog houses.
“I’m in Girl Scouts,” explains Fahey. “… I thought of a project a couple of years ago for my bronze award which was a donation box for the humane society.”
So, the pair contacted Tri-County Humane Society to see if the organization would be able to use outdoor dog houses. Instead, Tri-County gave them the contact information to Leech Lake Legacy, a dog rescue organization on the Leech Lake Reservation.
Leech Lake Legacy was thrilled to accept dog houses made by students as a donation. Their only request was that the houses be built to accommodate large or extra-large dogs.
“We’re almost done…. We’ll have three that will be donated,” explains Laudenbach over the noise of saws, sanders and pounding hammers.
With piles and piles of half-cut wood, the students worked hard to ensure wood styles matched. They believed the houses needed to be high-quality because special dogs would be living in the houses.
Some of the students had large dogs at home, so they took measurements of height, weight and length to determine the dimensions needed to house large and extra-large dogs.
The design is wide with a built-in wall (wind block) for the dogs to help escape from rain, snow or cold. Students kept in mind the best care for the dogs.
Now toward the end of the trimester, the project is wrapping up. Tri-County will deliver the dog houses to Leech Lake Legacy on behalf of North Junior High with the hope that these students are leaving a legacy for future dog house occupants and their caregivers.
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