Submitted by mellercopter t3_z9xjcr in vermont
I wanted to see if anyone has a doggie door in their house that they would recommend for VT weather. I've found a couple double flap ones with magnets that claim they are good to -40 and won't open in heavy winds but figured I would see if anyone had any first hand experience. It would be in a wooden exterior door in a heated mud room off my kitchen so I'd like to minimize heat loss wherever possible. Thanks!
Any brands you know of? All the microchip ones I've looked at don't have the same weather assurances as the manual ones. I'm also paranoid that they'd get locked out in the snow while I'm not at the house.
Sorry our pets all passed away & my wife won't let me get anymore. I have been out the pet world for a while. Our pet doors have been removed.
We also did the invisible fence. That was a lot of time & effort. It worked for a while but eventually it became useless.
Sorry about your pets, also sorry you can't get more. I have two crazy little yippers you can borrow. You may not want more dogs after a weekend with my ankle biters though. Thanks for your insight!
There has been a tendency in the past several years for people to adopt reactive dogs that they can't or won't control. These days I would be hesitant to let any dog outside when I am not home. I definitely wouldn't let little yippers out when I am not home or alone at night.
At night the wild life comes into play.
Backyard is fully fenced with 6ft solid picket and I'm in town so the wildlife is less concerning, but my dogs are also Velcro dogs and hate the cold so especially during the winter they'd be right back in. I am home most of the time so it is really mostly for at night. They are small so they can't really hold it all night. I used a strip of live sod in a tray inside when I lived in an apartment that I'd toss when it started to smell, but now that I have a yard it's just annoying.
I used the PetSafe extreme weather door for years at my old place. It worked pretty well, but I did have a couple of problems.
When it got SUPER COLD, the flaps would go rigid and wouldn’t always catch on the magnets to seal back up. I would always make it a point to occasionally double check the flaps while I was home, or at night before bed.
As the flaps aged (3ish years) they began to curl in leaving air gaps at the edges. I forget how much replacement flaps were, but I’m thinking they were like $75, and the door was probably over $100.
At my new place I have just the standard PetSafe door because I needed it that day and couldn’t wait for an order to come through. It’s attached to my occasionally heated wood shop, but that thing is worthless in the cold. Would have been better just cutting a hole in the wall because it would have saved me $70.
Yeah I've done a bunch of research on how well the regular doors would hold up and I'm nervous about some of the claims they make about cold weather functionality. It's good to know I can rule out the petsafe doors, they are definitely the most readily available. Thank you!
I installed an awesome one from Energy Efficient Dog Door.com and it’s been great. It’s a double magnet seal which is totally draft free. Only hitch is when it’s super cold out the gasket can freeze and our dog has to push harder to open it.
I saw that one and it's on my short list. Thought it was a little weird the flaps were solid color not clear, but maybe that helps keep pests from happening in?
https://store.petsafe.net/extreme-weather-aluminum-pet-door#1076=1751
We got this door for our 2 labs and I am finally free from my second job as door person for the pups. The flaps snap shut very well, so it keeps the cold air out. We are in northern new york, near lake george so we get some cold weather. The dogs like it and so do we. It has a hard plastic cover to shut it for the evening.
Someone else mentioned a petsafe door and said that the flaps froze up when it got super cold, have you had it through the winter yet? It looks like the weather there is kind of similar but with less snow so I don't know if that would make a difference here.
Sorry for the delayed response. I just saw this.
It is in the 20s here now and no problems. It was single digits a week ago and still ok. They have not frozen up on us at all.
The PetSafe company stands behind their product as well. I had a PetSafe collar that stopped working 11 1/2 months into the 12 month warranty. They sent me a new one without a lot of back and forth. Just an apology and a new one in the mail. What's not to love about that?! This is why I bought a Pet Safe door. I have a collar for the other dog and no problems at all with that one.
Doggie door = wildlife entrance. I witnessed a case where skunk entered house thru dog door, dog chased skunk through house spraying everywhere. House had to be evacuated and extensively renovated. A nightmare.
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Awesome, you can come to my house and open and shut it for them at 3 in the morning then too. You know you've really peaked in life when you spend your days trolling innocuous reddit posts.
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Yes, preferably if there are coyotes running around because I only want the strongest dogs in my house. I also leave the gate open because if they don't really love me they should leave. Plus I bury their food out there before I go to bed because nothing is for free in this house. Get a grip dude.
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I think the subreddit you are looking for is r/dogs
Sure but since the dog related content is a question I am specifically asking of Vermonters for a dog door that will also be residing in VT it seemed like maybe the VT subreddit was probably appropriate. I guess I could ask in the dog reddit open to the whole world and then tell people to only reply if they have a doggie door in VT, but that seems kind of silly.
I don't even have a dog but I like learning about how things work, and being in VT this is relevant because cold weather obviously affects things quite a bit. Sure it's a doggy door but the concepts can be considered more universal than that, so thanks. And good luck with your install
There is no reason you can't just ask the appropriate community r/dogs for a cold weather dog door my friend. You will get much more feedback when you post your question in the appropriate subreddit.
This post has nothing to do with Vermont IMO
Please follow Reddiquette:
"Post to the most appropriate community possible."
I am literally asking people who live in VT who have a doggie door what they as Vermonters would recommend in their home in VT. Not trying to be difficult, but this kind of is appropriate. I don't know if you've spent any time in r/dogs, but they are surprisingly less friendly than the folks in this sub.
Well I am sorry to hear that you don't seem to get along with the folks at r/dogs, but that is the appropriate place to have dog related discussions.
This is a subreddit for talking about Vermont, not a place for talking about dog doors. This is NOT the "most appropriate subreddit" for this conversation.
There is no such thing as a "Vermont dog door", it's just a cold weather dog door, which I am sure the folks at r/dogs know all about and would love to talk about there, because again, that is the appropriate subreddit for that conversation.
Just because you happen to live in Vermont while you are asking about an unrelated topic, does not make it a topic about Vermont.
There is no such thing as VT only snow tires or VT only winter boots, or VT only woodstoves, or VT only heat pumps, but all of those things get posted here because people are specifically asking about their applications and functionality in relation to VT which is exactly what I am doing here. I'm not asking about cold weather dog doors. I am asking people who live where I live to tell me their first hand experiences with them.
I searched for r/dogs, the first three posts were about how everyone is unhelpful, judgmental, and mean in the sub. I don't really understand the need to reply, if you don't have a doggie door in VT then this post isn't for you. If you do, I'd love to hear about any experiences you have had a long with the handful of other people who have experience with having a dog door in VT.
Please follow Reddiquette:
"Post to the most appropriate community possible."
Maybe people seem unhelpful, judgemental and mean because you don't follow Reddiquette?
There is no snow tire subreddit, or winter boot subreddit, so people talk about it as a general topic here because there is no more appropriate subreddit to do so, unlike a discussion about dogs, there is a subreddit for discussions about dogs, it is r/dogs**.** There is also a r/heatpump subreddit and a subreddit for wood stoves called r/woodstovin and those are the "most appropriate communities for those discussions". That's how Reddiquette works.
Please follow Reddiquette. The appropriate community for discussions about dogs is r/dogs.
This is a community for discussing Vermont, not dogs and dog related things.
Dude, I literally scrolled for 30 seconds in your comments and you have commented on dog related posts in both Boston and new Hampshire subreddits and in none of those responses were you lecturing people about all dog posts needing to be in r/dogs. If this is the hill you're willing to die on whatever.
Yeah, because those were discussions about Boston and New Hampshire.
You are not discussing Vermont here, you are discussing dogs and dog doors, which has literally nothing to do with Vermont.
Please follow Reddiquette. The appropriate community for discussions about dogs is r/dogs.
I am discussing the weather within the state of Vermont and how that weather may impact the temperature of my home in VT if I modify my home in VT with an item used by dogs who also love in VT and would like input solely from people in the state of Vermont on their experiences in VT with VT weather and how that weather has impacted the temperature of their homes in VT when they modified that home with an item used by their dogs who also live in VT. If I plan to coat the door with maple syrup or build a creamee dispenser in the top would that make it VT enough for me to seek the input of Vermonters or should I just create a subreddit for Vermonters with doggie doors instead?
No, you are not, you are discussing cold weather dog doors, which is a discussion that you should really take to the appropriate subreddit, which again is r/dogs.
Please follow Reddiquette:
"Post to the most appropriate community possible."
Creating a subreddit for dog doors is a good solution, yes.
JerryKook t1_iyj70fg wrote
Spend the extra money and get one that only opens for animals with the chip or rfid tag.
Dog doors are great but they open you up to a new set of problems. Animals that you don't want coming into your house. Your dog going out to bark in the middle of the night. Etc.
Our cat brought in some full size rabbits. He also had this thing about once he brought a rodent into the house, he lost interest in it.