DIY Doggie Dip

My wife and I must have gone to four different places and searched the web for hours to try and find some way of flea dipping our Labrador retriever. While we were at the last agriculture supply store deciding if we were really going to spend over $100 for a container big enough just to dip this dog, one of us had the idea of just building something instead.

Like most families, we have several boxes half full of screws, a few 2×4′s, and an old tarp laying around. A trip to the local home improvement store for the rest which ended up being a sheet of 1/2″ MDF. I even let the store cut the boards for me.

Box to flea dip the dog in

The best part of this was when the children really wanted to help assemble the box. The boys helped me assemble the inside 2×4′s so that the plywood / MDF would have something to attach to although at the time, they had no idea how this was going to look.

Once I started putting the side pieces of plywood on, I had one son holding the screws and one son holding the boards. Once assembled, we had a great “box” that would be large enough to hold our dog so she would not be able to get a “paw hold” in order to jump out.

I originally was going to caulk the sides, but we quickly decided that we were in too much of a hurry for the RTV to dry, so we lined the inside with an old tarp I had.

Jasmine Getting Flea Dipped

I was very happy with how well this all worked as the dog was very calm during the entire “procedure”. She just wanted to lay her head on my arm and otherwise she thought we were out for a day at the lake, so to speak.

For clarity, this was not supposed to be a project for years of enjoyment. I was trying to be cheep and teach my boys that sometimes a quick, dirty, ugly solution to a problem is all that is needed. Many times, you can use material that you already have around in order to achieve your goal. The entire project from purchasing of equipment to dipping the dog was only about one hour (sans fill time).