[Dailydrool] Dog doors

[Elizabeth Lindsey]

Our Elsinore is extremely pleased to announce that she's now the  
owner of a pet door.

I work from home as an editor, which requires sitting still and  
concentrating for long periods of time. Our Elsinore works from home  
as a security guard, which requires frequent trips to the yard to  
check on things out back and then coming back inside to keep an eye  
on the people using the sidewalk out front. Our differing job  
requirements were causing considerable conflict and upset. Finally,  
Ken got so tired of listening to me swear at Elsinore every fifteen  
minutes that he insisted we get a dog door.

It's been a life-changing experience for all of us--and for the  
better. We're all wishing we'd done this years ago. No more getting  
up and down all day long to let the dog in and out, no more swearing,  
and no more being beholden to someone for freedom of movement.  
Elsinore is thrilled at being able to come and go as she pleases, and  
I'm discovering that some of the times she's been coming to pester me  
in my office hasn't been because she wanted to go out yet again but  
because she wanted me to pat her for a minute. She was just coming in  
to say hello, not demand another trip outside. Young Charlie uses the  
door as well, but he doesn't need to be outside during the day as  
much as Elsinore does, so it's Elsinore's door.

Because we have a full-glass back door, we needed a wall-mounted  
door. I chose the Plexidoor from Moore Pet Doors, http://www.moorepet- 
petdoors.com/Wall-Mounted-Pet-Doors-s/21.htm. It has its pros and  
cons, but then I think most doors do. The doors are made of heavy,  
rigid clear plastic. They have that kind of fuzzy stuff around the  
edges that storm doors have and it acts as a pretty good seal when  
the door is shut. The frame is metal. Metal, of course, conducts  
cold, but we haven't noticed a bad draft around the door from either  
the metal frame or the doors themselves. We're in Nashville and it's  
a raw, damp 50 degrees here. I've just gone and held my hand in front  
of the dog door and I didn't feel any air movement. There's no  
telling how many years the seal will last, but it's good right now.

The dog door isn't a flap but a sort of saloon door. It closes on its  
own, which was hard on the dogs at first. Young Charlie in particular  
was convinced for about four days that if he pushed his head between  
the barroom doors to open them, he'd be decapitated. He just couldn't  
risk it. Until he saw a stray cat in the back yard and then he was  
out through that door before he knew what he was doing. Once he'd  
broken the ice like that, he was just fine going through the doors.  
It took Elsinore about four days and persuasion with treats to get  
used to the doors as well. And then she discovered the joys of total  
freedom of movement and she hasn't looked back.

Our basset friend Owen has a top-flap dog door at his house and he  
likes to stick his head out through it and look around before moving  
all the way through. He's not happy with the way it feels when he  
does that with our barroom doors--he sticks his head out and then  
when he pulls it back in again, the doors come back with him and  
catch him around the neck, which doesn't feel good at all. If only  
he'd keep on moving forward they wouldn't do that. And there I was  
worried about the dogs' tails getting caught. Tails aren't the  
problem here, necks are. The doors close on their tails all the time  
(gently, no snapping), but the dogs don't even seem to notice it.

The only thing I don't like about the dog door is that the metal  
plate that covers it when not in use has to be screwed into the frame  
every time. Other models let you slip the cover down a track on  
either side of the frame. I asked about the cover when I ordered the  
door, but apparently I wasn't asking the right questions and the  
customer service rep didn't think to tell me that this particular  
model is a screw-in, not a slide-down. We can lock the door with a  
key, and the lock is a sort of catch kind of lock. It holds the two  
doors together at the top.

Once we had the door installed, I realized just how easy it would be  
for someone to come along and kick it in if we didn't have the metal  
plate screwed in whenever we were gone, and screwing and unscrewing  
that plate (four screws) was a real pain. The lock only latches at  
the top of the dog door, not the bottom. All you'd need is a big boot  
or a strong hammer. While the average-sized man couldn't get through  
the door, I can and a child certainly could. I began to imagine the  
thugs in our city neighborhood catching a glimpse of the dog door  
from the alleyway and going to get one of their young nephews to send  
through the door to open up the back door for them, or to move  
through the house to get stuff to push out through the dog door. With  
the dogs in their crates while we're away, it'd be perfectly safe. We  
have an alarm system we always use, but unless you open a door or  
window, or move past a sensor, it won't go off, and one room had no  
sensor. So I quickly scheduled the alarm company to come out and  
install a sensor, and the handyman to come build a fake doghouse in  
front of the dog door. (He also installed the dog door for us because  
we aren't handy at all. His expertise and special tools were worth it  
in the frustration and expensive mistakes they saved us.)

The dog house plan came from http://www.doghouseplans.com, but I got  
the idea for a fake dog house from the Pet Doors for Walls web site,  
http://www.petdoors.com/pet_doors_for_walls.htm (scroll down to the  
bottom for photos of the fake dog house). So now there's a dog house  
in front of Elsinore's dog door. It's bolted to the deck floor, and  
from the alley it looks more like a storage bin than a dog house  
even. The handyman put a half wall inside the dog house, in front of  
the dog door, to make it even harder for someone to get in through  
the pet door. To get in now, you have to crawl through the dog house  
opening and make a sharp 90-degree turn to push against the dog door.  
There really isn't any room in that dog house for leverage to swing a  
hammer hard enough to make the lock on the dog door fail. Anyone  
who's walking by in the alley now can see the dogs going in and out  
of the dog house and think we've just turned them into outdoor dogs  
and they're merely hanging out inside their new dog house, which is  
big enough to hold two dogs their size. No one knows from looking at  
it that it's really hiding a dog door.

So here we are installing just a dog door, right? Nope, it turned out  
to be not just a dog door installation, but an interior wall removal  
(that involved electrical work and three walls of new drywall) in  
order to get the dog door into the best possible exterior wall, floor  
removal (because I hated those tiles that showed so much dirt), and a  
custom-built dog house. I can't believe how much money we spent on  
what became a remodel of the entire back entry way as opposed to just  
a dog door, but I also can't believe how much this dog door has added  
to the quality of all of our lives, humans as well as hounds.

My camera is broken or I'd offer to send photos of the dog door and  
fake dog house with its interior wall. But if anyone's interested,  
let me know and as soon as I've replaced my camera I'll take photos  
and send them. And I've got to replace that camera very soon because  
I signed up for the Howliday cards again.

Elizabeth