We sure do love dogs in this country. According to the Humane Society, us Americans have about 80 million dogs living in our homes. We do everything we can to make their lives, and ours, better. This included installing doggy doors. These may seem nice and convenient, but could these doors end up being a downfall of having a pup?
This nice convenience has also made burglarizing homes more convenient as well. These small doors cut into a door are a gateway into the home. Most of the time, these doors are small enough to keep most adults at bay and squeezing through would likely result in getting stuck, which would not be a pleasant experience. So, most people assume that they are safe if someone cannot completely squeeze through.
Here is a something to wrap your brain around. Can a person just put their arm through the slot and reach up to the locks on the door? Every tried doing that before? You might want to test that theory out before you learn the hard way.
Does that mean that you should immediately cover that door and make poor fido have to wait on you to go outside and do his business? Well, if you can reach up and unlock the door yourself, then you certainly have a problem. If this happens to be the case, you have a few other options instead of covering the door. One of these solutions is to change the lock.
If your lock is a knob with a little button that you can
turn by hand, that’s not going to stop the enterprising opportunist. If you have a deadbolt that has a little
handle or T-turn on the inside that unlocks it, you still have a problem. Those knobs and handles can be easily
manipulated by someone reaching through that doggy door and turning them. One solution is adding a 2-sided deadbolt,
the kind that requires a key to open on both sides. Likewise, you can change your existing
deadbolt (if you have one) to a two-sided deadbolt. With that in-place, the chance that someone
is going to be able to reach up inside and unlock the door is minuscule.
No lock or security is fool-proof but many crimes are crimes
of opportunity. Remove the opportunity
and fewer crimes will likely occur.
