Baby Gates

Baby gates are a huge FAIL in this house, at least in regards to keeping animals in certain rooms and out of others.

Does anybody actually have good luck with them?  Maybe they work with smaller dogs?

They certainly don't work with cats, and they don't work with our particular greyhound either.

Someone told us, when we got Argos, that greyhounds don't jump, and that a baby gate should be sufficient to keep him in a room.  (We wanted to restrict his movement in the beginning to keep him out of the kitchen, and to give the cats areas of the house to flee to if necessary.)

Well, whoever told us that didn't know Argos.  Jeff was working from home one day, and Argos was baby-gated into the living room downstairs, as we were "baby-stepping" him towards being able to be left at home alone.  Jeff kept hearing Argos pacing around, and whining, but tried to ignore him, figuring that he just wanted to come upstairs.  Then he heard a series of thumps, and then a large THUMP and a crash.  He ran downstairs, and Argos was standing on the wrong side of the baby-gate, panting with a big grin on his face, tail wagging.  The baby-gate was still up, so he had obviously jumped it.  I don't know what the thumps were... him getting a running start and maybe clipping the top of the gate with his feet as he leapt?  The big crash was obviously 80 lbs of greyhound coming down onto the hardwood floor.

Later, we attempted to put the gate up a little higher, giving the cats room to go underneath, but thinking, there's no WAY that Argos will jump THAT high.  Well, we were right.  I was sitting in the living room this time, and Argos was gated into the dining room to hopefully encourage him to eat, with fewer distractions.  I heard a muffled thump as his chest hit the floor, and then slide slide slide, then whimpering.  When I walked over to see what in the world was going on, Mr. Argos had attempted to do the limbo under the gate.  He made it about halfway under and realized that he wasn't going to be able to get his hindquarters through.  *face palm*

We gave up on the baby gates with Argos.

After we got Romeo, we kept him isolated in the guest room behind a real door.  Eventually, we opened the door, and put TWO baby gates, one on top of the other, across the doorway, to keep the other cats out of his room, but to allow them all to see one another.  This was about as tall as a human being, by the way.

Bit didn't jump it, no.  But she did climb up the entire thing and then dropped over onto the other side.

So this is what we DO use them for, and with some success.  They are "crash bars" to keep the fosters from running out of the guest room as soon as you try to go in.  I put the gate in front of me like a barrier, and keep angling it as I move in to prevent them from darting out into the hall.  I'm fairly certain that Patches hates that gate with all of his heart.

It works pretty well.  So we finally do have a use for them.