Jumping the baby gate

[Gretta]

Hi all... Looking for suggestions if you have any.

Over the last few weeks, we’ve been getting ready to try to wean Gretta off her crate when we’re not home with her… we put up a baby gate across the door to the spare room where her crate is, have let her just hang out in there with the gate open and closed etc.

So last night was the first attempt of not crating her while we were out of the house. We had a few short errands to run, so she got her Kong in the crate as usual, but we left the door ajar and secured the baby gate. When we got home I was getting my keys out and walking up to the back door… and there she is, grinning at me and doing her happy sit dance right in front of the back door… and on the wrong side of the baby gate.

The little stinker jumped the gate- I really never suspected she would do that. She’d tried once when she was much smaller (and less graceful ) and hadn't tried since. Thought she'd learned her lesson.

Needless to say the cat’s food dishes were licked clean, there were huge Gretta sized paw indentations all over the living room furniture, and toys were strewn everywhere. She’d been having a grand old time :p (and I realize it could have been much worse- nothing was chewed up or damaged... or injured thankfully!)

So any ideas how we could discourage this? I thought of raising the gate, but I’d be afraid she would still try it and possibly hurt herself.
I’m sure we could train her to not jump the gate… but if she never does it when we’re there so we can catch her in the act, I feel like we’d need to set her up to fail so she could be corrected. That doesn’t seem a logical way to go.


Any suggestions are welcome…

Cori

[Vivianne]

Hello...I had the same problem and solved it by using two baby gates. One above the other in the door frame. I purchased the plastic style gates and they have a cut out on the bottom for the cat to go through. :D

[aquarius3079]

We have been leaving our 6 month old gated in the kitchen and the first couple times he jumped the gate also. After coming home to the cat dish licked clean along with him having a meal out of the litter box we had to do something. We did raise the gate only 2 inches off the ground and that did the trick. It is just enough to discourage him. We put his toys in with him and seems to be fine. But I agree if your girl is adventurous this may not be a safe alternative for you. Good luck.:D

[Ocean]

Haven't solved this one myself - Blaze will NOT leave the kitchen no mater what :) , but Miss Ocean is allowed in the rest of the house now as long as I am with her (Velcro dog, no problem there). However, when I want her to stay in the kitchen for any reason, she would stand up with her paws on the gate and wriggle over it. I tried raising it, but she liked that even better, she shoved her head underneath and pried it up to wriggle under. For a while, just leaning the gate precariously inthe doorway worked because she hated it when it fell down with a bang so she wouldn't touch it... But then found that she could push it the other way and it would fall on the carpet and she could hop over it.

These dogs are too darn smart sometimes...

My solution is to put her in the crate if I don't want her in the rest of the house with me for any reason. I don't trust her to be loose when we're not home (which is VERY rare as I work days and my husband works night, there is nearly always someone home except for about 2 hours a day - CRATES!).

[Bruce Lanthier]

You can train your dogs not to jump the gate.

http://www.rottweiler.net/forums/sho...threadid=27768

[Gretta]

Thanks all for the replies~
I’m thinking I will probably have to go the route of getting a second gate (the tension rod kind) to put above the first… the current one is the super sturdy kind that’s screwed into the door frame.

Thanks for posting that previous thread Bruce-
I would love to train Gretta not to jump, but she does NOT jump the gate when we’re home (even if there is an open jar of PB on the other side… tried that last night and she just sat and stared at the jar through the gate :o ). The only way she’d go over when we’re there is if I were actually calling her to come…and I don’t want to punish her for going over the gate when she wouldn't do it in the first place if I didn't call her.

Now that I’m thinking about it though, perhaps we could partially dismantle the one we have so if she tried to jump it when we’re not home it would come crashing down… might have to try that tonight!

Cori