 Barked: Tue May 1, '12 5:14pm PST |
 | |  | | Savvy, I put a dog door in one of those metal storm doors. I actually mounted it on a piece of plywood that was about 10 inches longer and 10 inches wider than the door, then cut the hole for the size of the dog door. My reasoning was that the plywood would make a stronger "frame" for the door, BUT also that since those doggy doors DO NEED replacing fairly often and I usually can't ever find the same brand/exact size, I could have some breathing room if my hole was too big for the next door. I painted the plywood the same color as the storm door.
That said, make sure you really WANT the dog door... I found my dogs were constantly racing outside and barking... not cool, especially in the evenings when people are outside enjoying the QUIET evening air. Worse yet, they dragged everything they could, including frogs and toads and snakes, inside the house, and since they had the WHOLE house, it wasn't cool. Especially the night I found a LIVE SNAKE warming itself in my waterbed!!!!
I ended up scraping that door entirely and went back to manually letting them in and out.
I DID put a doggy door off a puppy pen in my "dog room". It goes thru the wall, again I used the plywood frame, and I LOVE that one. It also has it's own pen outside, and that pen is covered so I don't have raccoons, stray cats, snakes and all of that coming in with the dogs. An occasional frog but they are confined to the inside pen!!!
I put only those dogs that DON'T sit outside and bark in that pen. They can go out whenever, but all the stuff they bring back inside is at least contained in that one pen. I have a bunch of heavy stuffed beds in the pen. Right now Jones and Hilda are in there and they can be out day and night because they NEVER bark. It IS too cold in the Winter, but is great the other three seasons.
Originally it was for puppies and worked great for them, too. They all housebroke themselves, which was nice!! When I had the puppies (poodles) in there I also mounted another doggy door on the outside wall since it was an old house and an 8 inch thick wall. That worked great and was warm enough in the Winter for daytime use. |  |  | |  |
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17
. I have 1 that goes from my kitchen to the mud room and then 1 from the mud room to the section of the yard with a 6' stockade fence for the dogs during the day. I love the fact that if they want in, they stay in, if it's a nice day and they want out, they can go out.If we go out, I don't have to rush home to let them out and I don't have to get up early on my days off to let them out. I live in the country and I have never had any unexpected critters using the doors. Although you can lock them if you want, I haven't locked mine in 9 yrs. The bigger the door the more expensive so we made ours ourselves. Not very hard to do.