Pet Door Survey

I know a fair amount of y'all have critters, but how many of y'all actually let them come 'n go thru a dedicated portal in the family domicile?

My cats used to come and a they pleased in the old apt. I made a cat door that fastened in a sliding glass door.

okay so....who has had a snake....skunk......raccoon...stray animal....possum....human of no relation.....crawl thru said PET DOOR? yes I'm bored.....no motorsports on the tube

I have no answer for that since I never had anything with a pet door (my cats knew how to open a screen door if they wanted outside) but I was at a friend's house yesterday where he had a baby raccoon in a cage and he also had a pet door to the basement so the cats could get to the litter box but the dogs/chillun's couldn't.

This is exactly of zero relevance, but I thought it was cool that he was raising a baby raccoon.

We used to open one up to the garage with water and a fan on for the dog when we lived in California.

Never had anything besides him come though but he had a nasty tendency to kill or maim anything in the yard that wasn't me or related to me.

We use the garage as a halfway house...pet door in the car door, bowl of water in the garage. Fuzzy one has to go "Meow" at the door from the garage to the house to gain entry into the residence. She can get inside the garage to get out of the rain, wind, heat, cold, etc. has water and a comfy box to nap in. Only other creature to enter the garage was a racoon. Once we took the food bowl out of the garage it never came back.

We have one for our pug thay is powered and opens when he gets close to it with the sensor on his collar. Of course we had to stop using this bc our English bulldog will dig under the fence. So now we have an expensive dog door that just sits there

My brother in law has a really cool set up for his dogs. His living room has a large brick fireplace the was unused. It has a long and wide brick area on the floor, and then thefireplace itself kicks out the side of the house. He put a dog door to the outside in the corner, a large dog bed in the fireplace itself, and built a kennel around the perimeter and top of the brick floor, with a door that he can open or close to the living room. He can set how much access the dogs have to the house.

One thing to remember about dog doors- people tend to install them wrong, at floor level. Then large dogs have to crouch, or they buy too big a dog door. The door should be sized for the dog's body, and placed at the corresponding height- they know how to pick up their legs.

Cats have access to the garage to stay cool/warm and dry out there. Based on the amount of dead animals the hunter leaves for me in the garage, and the number of animals that I find (by smell) that weren't all dead yet and crawl under things to expire, I never want to give them access to the main house from outside.

Possums, Raccoons and Skunks have followed the cats in from time to time. I didnt mind as they all got along, Mama skunk brings her babies by every year, I usually catch them up and give them their shots.

759NRNG wrote: okay so....who has had a snake....skunk......raccoon...stray animal....possum....human of no relation.....crawl thru said PET DOOR? yes I'm bored.....no motorsports on the tube

Skunk shots!?!?!!!! Whaaaa????

It's a life saver my beagle comes and goes as she pleases, has never dumped in the house, feeds herself goes in and out her own door. I have no downside except a minimal HVAC. Ours goes in the bottom half of a floor length window. Like a window unit ac.

759NRNG wrote: Skunk shots!?!?!!!! Whaaaa????

I train animal for movies so I dont mind critters. I let my Skunk permit go because they raised the prices onme, So now I just train them when they are little and call them when I need them. They usually check in a few days a week so I can see how they are doing. One of the 4 this year can be found around his buddy all the time.

there are a lot of possums and raccoons in the industry so I dont usually bother too much with them.

I would love to have trained skunks. Attack skunks, to be specific.

No pet door stories as our fur-child Claude is an inside cat for life.

I have a dog door for our Siberian Husky. No other animals have ever came in (well, except for a squirrel that was inside her mouth once)

It's nice to have, because she's really damned vocal when she wants something. Now she can go in/out as she pleases.

In reply to MulletTruck:

That is beyond awesome! I <3 skunks and don't think they smell bad at all.

Three doors for the cat are our house-- one into the garage, one from garage to basement mech room, and another from the mech room to the rest of the house.

She didn't have any problem figuring the setup out.

As far as other animals, had one instance of another cat getting in several years ago. Have had multiple instances of the cat dragging in dead, mutilated bloody carcasses. At which point the dog usually eats them, to be puked up later.

The dog, being an Irish Wolfhound, is too big for a pet door.

No pet door for us- for one, the dog is pretty big so it would be almost the size of a full door. For another, the cat is not allowed outside and she would certainly get out through any door- we learned earlier this year NOT to leave the door open to the deck unless one of us and/or the dog is there near it (cat and dog don't get along- cat was mine and dog was SWMBO's before we got together) because she will sneak out.