Before you try to solve the “I’m always opening and closing the door” pet problem, read another Captain Jack and Cobalt episode.
When last we left the Golden Retriever and the German Shepherd, both had grown waist high, three feet tall. Fully grown and well-schooled by Miss Lucy, the elderly Dachshund at Cobalt’s house. Next door to Captain Jack’s fenced pen at the back of our basement.
A four-foot high wall that reached up to ground to the right, our house extension to the left, and a five-foot high wired fence in between made the boundaries of Captain Jack’s outdoor pen. Inside the pen was a doghouse for our river-sailing Retriever.
To make the outside pen available, at his choosing, we installed a basement dog door. Let the Captain bump the swinging door and go outside, into his pen—except those times we locked the dog door from within the basement.
One three o’clock morning when Captain Jack nuzzled me from dreamland, I found Captain Jack and Cobalt panting beside my bed. Cobalt had leaped atop the doghouse and into the pen. And the Captain had led his ‘skipmate’ upstairs to our bedroom.
That early morning invasion changed our habits. Before we went to bed, we saw the Captain out through the adult basement door, waited and then locked the dog door when he returned.
That evening ritual solved another swinging-dog door problem. Other critters from the forest behind our house quit arriving during the early morning.
The case for the dog door is not closed. Just be sure you lock the swinging door before bedtime.
Picture by Inked Pixels at Shutterstock
