Baby gates come in handy for restricting a pet from a room for a variety of reasons:
- Separating a new pet from current pets when they can’t be monitored.
- Keeping pets from the kitchen while cooking or while food is out & pet can’t be monitored directly. It is far better not to let them practice food stealing, once they get something it is self rewarding & it is a far harder habit to stop them from doing.
- While house training baby gates help limit the area a dog can get to & have accidents. Again far easier to train if accidents are limited.
- If you don’t want your dog on your bed, but don’t want to close the doors all the time. I take baby gates on vacation to keep them out of the bedrooms other guests are using, so they don’t have to close the doors.
- Solid baby gates can be used to keep ferrets in a room. Ferrets can climb some gates or leap off something to get over so make sure you know your ferrets can’t do this before you walk away for more than a few minutes. They are adorable, but can be mischievous, so you have to keep an eye on them.
- Baby gates can also come in handy at the top or bottom of stairs to prevent puppies or senior dogs from falling down or prevent them from going upstairs & fall or get into trouble.
- Baby gates can prevent pets from getting into work areas such as a work shop (metals or wood etc…) so they don’t step on nails, metal shavings or similar.
- Can be used on some decks or patios to keep pets on deck when needed.
- If you want a fur free room or have a room with lots of plants or have caged pets (birds, ferrets, rabbits, or guinea pigs) that you don’t want your dog to have access to (prey driven breeds).
- Keep dogs out of the kids playroom, but you can leave the door open so you can see the kids at play. Protect your dogs from getting the kids toys & chewing them & possibly choking or swallowing pieces that require surgery to remove.
- Keep pets from running out the door when your company is coming or going.
- Allows pets to be restricted from your guests & jumping on them until they can calm down & act appropriately. This is a great training tool to help them to understand “4 on the floor” & they get attention.
I use a gate like the one above at the top of my basement stairs. I fostered for many years & some dogs were unfamiliar with stairs so this helped them to be less frightened when they came inside. For quite a while I had ferrets (fostered some & had some of my own) & they had a pen in the basement for playtime & I didn’t want the dogs in my basement when they were playing in the pen.
The above baby gate is one of the most popular & easy to find at garage sales, resale shops & sometimes even put out at the curb for free. I have several of these & these are the types I take on vacation, I can just lean them in front of a door & they won’t try & move or cross it.
The above gate is not high so your dog has to be small or trained not to jump over it. These are nice if you have a cat or smaller animal that you want to be able to use the small door. Most cats can jump over, but seniors or kittens may not be able to. Having gates like this with a litter box on one side which allows the cat to get to it, but not the dog. Sadly some dogs will eat kitty dodo if given the opportunity to.
Mesh gates like above are best used by pets who will honor the boundary & not try & chew it or scratch it up, probably not best type for puppies. They are longer than some gates which is nice.
The above gate is really nice for wide areas, common in open concept houses, which are very common in this day & age. I think a lot of people with open concept homes didn’t realize they had options for gates in their homes.
I have a couple like the one above, if I don’t lock the gate my dog Echo can lift the lever & open the gate.
Gates can come in handy to have around the house even if don’t always need them. Sometimes you only need gates short term, & sometimes long term is best.
Hope this post helped you to see there are a variety of gates & uses for them. Sometimes using gates that prevent a pet from getting into an area & causing damage can be the difference between a dog staying in a home or being re-homed. I sadly have seen this happen & find it sad when a pretty simple solution was only $40 or less. Dogs usually except boundaries if introduced properly & not negatively or as a punishment.
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Thanks, Debbie
Echoing Great Pet Care 