What a fun thing to do! I'd love to have 5-8 dogs running around :-)

It's not entirely clear from you pictures - is the fenced off exercise area open to the patio area? You mentioned the dogs scratching at the windows/doors which makes me think it is... I'd be inclined to have the enclosure set up in such a way that the dogs are fenced off from the patio and a reasonable amount of lawn/activity area for people but part of the enclosure extends close to the patio area, with a gate that opens onto the patio or a small path extension from it. It looks like there's a arbour laying on its side in one picture - I'd put that up so the access to the gate of the dog run is through the arbour. Plant some nice vines to grow over the arbour and the fence of the run near the patio to make it attractive. If you put a concrete pad on the inside of the dog area on the other side of the gate to the arbour, the dogs will mill around there while waiting to get into the patio/house. That will clean off a fair bit of the mud. One drawback of keeping them from having free access to the patio area is that you may trade pawing at the doors to barking to get you attention! Are you far enough from neighbours that a bit of barking won't be too big of a problem? On the whole, I'd stick to concrete for the patio and dog run pad by the gate - less expensive and easy to power-wash to clean as needed. If you want to make it fancier, maybe put a decorative stone or brick border on it.

Thanks WoodyOak! ! I thought I had a notification system on this if someone responded, sorry about the delay. We used to have the entire fenced 3 acres encompassing the back of the house, so we had no barrier and our dog could go in and out. When we got our rescue cocker she would sit and scratch at the doors and windows endlessly, so we did fence off a square area for the house, then if we wanted them out of that area completely though, we'd have to herd them from the door of the house, through the small yard, to the gate, and through it and most of the time at night they'd do their business in 'our' yard adn rush right back to the door. We put in a door to the 'office/dog room' that used to be a bed room and are trying to utilize that as their only point of entrance. We had to put up a temp fence from that door out while they relevled the ground around the house, it's hard to explain. Definately plan on using the arbor, we have two and have wisteria growing elsewhere we want to transplant onto it....although....the wisteria did a number on our old arbor even though we thought it was strong enough (is ANYTHING strong enough for old wisteria?) Anyyyyway...we did plan to fence off an area , just can't come up with a plan for the 'alley' the dogs use to go in and out into the bigger yard. Yes, we are in the country, so the barking is no problem. THey are only out during nice days and they settle down fairly quickly...it's when they can SEE us/me in the windows or moving around they go nuts. Maybe I shoudln't be so nice to them? haha Thanks for your ideas!!! (I could arrange those dogs for ya! haha)

I wouldn't think it would be too hard to lay out a nice - and functional - fenced area that is large enough to satisfy the dogs needs (e.g. shade, water and space to run) but is easy to manage the going in and out - especially if you now have a room that will be their entrance and exit. Try drawing the space near the house to reasonable scale and play around drawing possibilities on that. If there is work being done around the house, perhaps the contractor - or whoever - has a scale drawing or survey that you could get a copy of and use that. Have the fencing run right up to the door - or an alley off the main enclosure - with a side gate onto the patio. Then the dogs would run straight into the enclosure but you have a way to get them - and you - onto the patio when you need to go there.

I'm not sure where you are. I would not ever plant a wisteria on an arbour - especially if you are in an area where they are particularly vigorous. I have two wisterias but both are trained as small trees. It's much easier to prune and maintain them that way. It's hard to prune them on a tall structure and, if you don't prune them, they are a horrible thuggy mess! Go for a better behaved vine for the fences - a nice honeysuckle perhaps.

(Our current dog and our previous one were rescued dogs.)

Rescue pets are the best!!! Kudos for going that route...so many need homes.

On that wisteria....how do you train it to be a tree? I have it growing now on low fencing. It's from cuttings from a deceased fave uncle who had a massive arbor of it. I never asked him how much he had to maintain it!! Eek.

If the wisteria is on low fencing, it should be fairly easy to maintain because it would be easier to reach to prune. But it could take the fence down as the vine gets bigger! It's almost impossible to get rid of a wisteria once it gets established (there are 1000 year old ones in Japan and 500+ year old ones in China...) so the 'safest' way to grow one I think is as a tree in an open area where you can mow around it to control the root suckers. To make a tree of it is pretty simple - you just keep one stem (tied to a support to begin with) and cut off all others. There are some detailed 'rules' for pruning wisteria but I find it's effective to just remove root suckers and pinch/cut back all whippy new growths as they appear into the framework that you want to establish to keep it the size you want. In my opinion the only wrong way to prune a wisteria is to not prune it! And most people don't prune them nearly as much as they should so they are most often seen as tangled messes that flower poorly or not at all. I really think it would be wiser to plant better-behaved vines on the enclosure fence and arbours and make the wisteria(s?) spectacular stand-alone garden features as trees.