How a Dog Door Made My Dogs Healthier

For years, we had a traditional sliding glass door serving as an exit to our back yard. With time, the door gradually became less functional. It was time to replace it. We questioned the value of replacing it with the same type of door due to our experience with poor insulation during the hot Texas summers. So we started over.

After much research and price comparisons, we decided on a French door with built-in doggie door. It did not cost much more than similar doors and it provided a few welcomed advantages.
First, with both my wife and I working, it was often a challenge to tend to our beloved puppy dogs and their need to go outside. Sometimes, despite their best efforts, the swatch of carpet near the back door proved to be their only option. More often, a day or evening out was cut short due to our pressing home-front obligations. No longer.

Second, we worried about the long term effects of having two dogs who must plan their bathroom breaks around our inflexable schedule. They would "hold it" as long as they could and broke for the exit the moment we returned home. You could almost here the "Ahhh" as they reached the back yard.

Something had to be done.

We debated on the perceived downsides of a doggie door. The typical home improvement store sold after-market plastic versions that required a Do-It-Yourself approach and final results appeared to vary greatly depending upon your own proclivity for such tasks. Having never installed a doggie door, I saw little hope that a DYI approach would produce professional results.

We also worried about the notion of having a 2x2 unlocked entrance into our home. After all, we have children and live in a large metropolitan area with newscasts full of home invasions and all manner of "if it bleeds, it leads" nightly ratings boosters.

Research led me to a local company that specializes in taking factory standard doors and custom building pet doors while maintaining the quality of the overall manufacturing properties. In talking to the owner, he pointed out that anyone who wished to scale an eight foot privacy fence after seeing a doggie door large enough for my American Staffordshire Pit Bull Terrier deserved what he had coming.

We signed the bottom line that day.

Now almost six months later, I realize that this door has changed not only our lives but the lives of our dogs. Our social calendar now includes chunks of time longer than 8 hours and we no longer return home to two dogs crossing their legs. I have since also, in using a non-scientific method, observed that our dogs go outside no fewer than two to four times per night while we sleep. Our dogs are happier, and apparently healthier. Imagine being able to use the restroom any time you feel the urge. Oh, wait, you're also human so you don't have to imagine it.
What have we been doing to our pets all these years? It seems almost cruel.