Outwitting clever canines

Most pet owners will agree it is nearly impossible to quarantine a pet to a specific area of the house 100 per cent of the time — and so drastic measures are often required.

My 10-pound cockapoo-havanese mix, Molly, is queen of the house, and recently celebrated her 12th birthday. My younger and more robust lacasapoo, Milo, is half her age and always follows her lead — she’s the boss!

And I just celebrated having finally figured out how to keep Molly on the main floor, despite numerous attempts at erecting prefab baby gates throughout the years.

Molly is a small dog — the quintessential lap dog. She loves to nestle and curl up on the couch for a snooze in your arms. However, when left to her own devices, she can be quite the schemer — never a chewer of sandals, shoes, or furniture (that job was clearly Milo’s calling earlier on), Molly has always managed to find a way through, around, or over a baby gate.

The main floor of my house was finished with hardwoods. It looks exactly like an old gymnasium floor throughout. And because my property is on a rural acreage, there was no need to have the floors refinished — it’s quite liberating to inform guests that they may indeed leave their shoes on, because there’s never a need to protect floors that already have the ‘distressed’ look.

This concept carries over to my dogs. As I’ve never been one to kennel my pets, it was an easy decision to allow Molly (and later both Molly and Milo) to have the run of the main floor while I was away for the day.

The second floor of my house is a different story altogether. Comprised of 1,600 square feet of wood-core laminates, this type of flooring and liquids do not mix. As such, it doesn’t take much to understand why it has been my ongoing intention to restrict the dogs to the main floor.

Molly was tiny when she first entered the family — just three and a half pounds of fur. It wasn’t long before I realized how smart she really was. Never overtly in your face with her canine savvy, she just always managed to stealthily make her way into places she didn’t belong when she had the place to herself.

The first baby gate didn’t last long. It was a typical wood-framed adjustable gate with diamond-shaped plastic lattice panels — she chewed through that after the first week. So I purchased a second gate (like a dummy) and attempted to pacify her desires by lacing the gate with a pet-safe spray-on deterrent, purchased at a local pet store whose clerk boasted 100% effectiveness — Molly chewed through it later that very same day.

When Molly did make her way to the second floor, she would have the inevitable accident, on occasion. This would cause the edges of the laminate to lift and remain damaged — because, as mentioned, laminates and liquids (of any sort) clash every single time.

I knew I had to find a way to keep her quarantined before my second-storey flooring was ruined beyond the odd corner here and there.

Six years into this adventure, Milo joined the LaBossiere clan. And where Molly ‘went’, Milo wanted to ‘go’ as well.

I tried a few styles of solid plastic baby gates – Molly found her way around and/or through every single one of them. Not always right away, but when she did find the magic combination to crack the latest code, there was no going back — she’d always manage to get upstairs.

Because Milo soon outgrew Molly in size, he couldn’t always follow in his older sister’s paw-steps. I’d get home to Milo barking in an anxious and jealous frenzy at the base of the stairs, looking up at Molly in a desperate attempt to get her to help him find his way upstairs, too. To no avail, Milo was always stuck downstairs when Molly found her way up.

This drama played out nearly every other day for months — and it was extremely frustrating. The upstairs flooring took a beating and I truly wasn’t sure what to do. It got to the point where a big piece of plywood, tied to the staircase banister on one side and to a screw in the wall on the other was all that could halt these shenanigans!

It wasn’t until the plywood became too much of an eyesore that the wheels began to turn — I needed to engineer a custom gate that could be set in place when needed and then be removed and hidden when not in use.

Clients of mine, Cindy and Mark Thorarinson, were facing a similar plight. With a couple of big dogs, numerous cats and a few other animals ruling their roost, Cindy asked me if I could install a French door at the base of their stairs, primarily to keep the pets in the basement during the day while they were at work.

Once in place, the door proved its worth in both functionality and esthetics.

Cindy recalls "a door to the basement was required to keep the cats safe from my dogs — a French door was my stylish way of making it seem like a design choice, even though we all know it’s really just an elaborate pet door."

I, however, could not install a door at the base of my stairs to rectify my ongoing pet issues. So, here’s what I tried instead.

Custom gate, v1.0

With remnant side panels which match my stairs, taking from old lower cabinets before my kitchen remodel, I fashioned a gate the width of my stairs. I affixed aluminum U-channel at an angle to the inner portion of both stair stringers on each side, which allowed the custom gate to slide in and out. Molly and Milo even kept me company as I completed the installation.

I can’t help but wonder now, if Molly had already begun to analyze how she could breach THIS gate — because, although it took much longer this time, she eventually did.

In disbelief, I arrived home from a long day at work to once again find Milo yelping up at his sister, who was perched at the top of the stairs (with what appeared to be a smirk on her little furry face).

Did she hop over? That would have been impossible, because the gate was set too steeply above the third stair.

Did she sneak upstairs before I left that morning? No, because I recalled giving both dogs their ‘gotta go to work’ treats before leaving.

Perplexed and disillusioned, I went back to the drawing board.

Best I can figure, the gap between the gate and the wall opposing the banister allowed Molly to figure out how to leverage her way up and over.

Custom gate, v2.0

Instead of affixing aluminum U-channel to the inside of each stringer (which left a small but apparently breachable gap), the next version of this gate design would better fill the space between banister and opposing wall. I installed U-channel on the inside of the banister, perpendicular to the floor near the nosing of the first and lowest stair. I then fastened U-channel of the same size directly to the wall opposite the banister. This process left no gaps.

The new custom gate is a precisely cut slab of two-sided particle board laminated with white arborite, 42 inches tall and as wide as the space between the inside of the aluminum channel on either side. With narrower U-channel affixed to the edges of the gate itself, this removable gate slides in and out very easily, and can be hidden away behind my writer’s desk when not in use.

My fingers are crossed, but after four months, the gate has yet to be breached.

As pet owners, we do what we gotta do. Often, it’s a balance between protecting vulnerable aspects of our home from our pets’ antics and providing our pets with a safe and comfortable living environment.

Finding ways to maintain this balance is the ultimate challenge.

I’m extremely lucky — my dogs are good dogs — well-behaved and never on the hunt for mischief. Milo loves to play and no longer chews anything but his toys. Molly is the snuggler who’s just too smart for her own good. To this day, I still catch her sneaking a peek up the stairs as she walks past. I can’t help but wonder if she’s just checking to see if the gate is there, or if she’s gathering intel and plotting how to get past it on her next second-floor adventure.

BossEnterprise@outlook.com