Damn- I'm always getting behind in my own journal....I'll try to catch up later.
The 'dog fence' idea is something that Stage used last year to train a plant. He used a bit of fencing or wire gate. It just does what a scrog screen does. It gives you something to tie to and lets you wrestle the plant into a flat shape, like making a horizontal hedge. Or, I suppose, any other shape you desire. Then, after the stretch, the screen/fence is removed, giving you a trained but liberated plant.
I used a section of wire mesh fencing material, which was sized to take the place of two of my regular screens. I tilted it up on one side and grew the plant canopy tilted like that to catch the light better. By the time the plant was done the stretch and into flower it was pretty much set in position. When I took the fence off she contracted a bit, but was still basically a rectangle of canopy about 3' x 2'.
Mostly the reason she looks like a mop in the pictures, or like she grew on the edge of a windy cliff, is that she was feeling a little floppy with those heavy buds on her, after I dragged her through various obstacles to get to the outside world.
Mama Thai is a tough plant- and I could have easily rearranged her back into the rectangle shape if I needed to.
I have become addicted to the scrog setup because it lets me get away with growing sativas and all different strains under the same lights, while letting me put in the minimum time there plant tending. The first time I tried scrogging was about a year ago. Before that I grew a bunch of different sizes and shapes of plants. I miss 'natural' plants and I get a bit jealous when I see people growing unscrogged and untrained plants. Scrogging also makes me feel a bit dirty, and guilty- like I'm running some sort of cannabis sweatshop here. Hey I'll twist and whip these girls into any shape I don't give a crap I just want more buds.
Actually it's just the best way I know to keep the plants in a stable form without being there to deal with their stretchy, floppy ways. I'd rather have less yield and grow them completely untrained so I could see what they really look like. But it quickly becomes a headache, and sometimes a mold factory. The dog fence idea is a bit of a compromise. I'd like to use it to shape a huge plant into something I could grow indoors, without having a huge scrog screen permanently attached.
As for the Donald Duck thing- that just came out of the blue and I just ran with it. I'm not sure what PotChimp is on about, or exactly what I'm on about either. Just winging it.... I don't follow the news. Is Donald Duck running for US president maybe?
Back building, before it got that name, is something that's been floating around for a while. On this forum LIght Addict I think was the first one to bring it to light, though he heard of it from others. I think LA has a thread on it. Basically- snipping just the tip of a bud off during flowering will induce it to grow more fat, and less pointy. It makes the bud grow into what some consider a more pleasing or more practical shape.
No journal for me, just some blather on this forum. I hope we're all around to see things legalized though cause it would loosen things up with the journals- instead of us just hanging around here pretending it's legal...Though come to think of it a lot of things in my life kinda run on that 'pretend it's legal' approach to things. Kind of like you two, I've noticed...
I've had to take a second job at the moment so am really not getting time to do much on here, it's a case of getting home at 1:30am, a quick check on the plants and then falling into bed or beer/smoke and bed on the odd occasion. It seems funny though, as I never used to need a second income until I started (along with other reasons) to grow this beautiful weed to save myself some money. Oh well my new lights should arrive from Canada over the next few days 
