Your garage door is a very useful thing to have at home. When it begins pouring rain on your way home from the grocery store, you can get your groceries inside without getting wet. When you forget your house key, you can still get inside.
We love our pets, and we want them to stay safe at all times. Garage doors, however, can pose a risk to pets, and pets, in turn, can pose a risk to garage doors.
Garage doors cause thousands of injuries to people every year and your pets are not immune to this potential danger. However, there are many things you can do to teach yourself and your household about pet safety while they are around garage doors.
How to Keep Pets Safe Around Garage Doors
Keeping your pets safe around your garage doors is simple when you follow a few easy steps. To make sure pet safety is a priority at your home, follow these simple pet-related garage door safety tips:
- Protect your garage door components: Pets are unpredictable. While you most likely don’t think your pet would gnaw on garage door components or wiring, you don’t really know for sure. Make sure to keep them as far away as possible from important garage door components that help promote safety. This goes for the tracks, too. Don’t tie or otherwise attach your pets to the garage door tracks that connect to the ground. It could be tempting to use this as a place to tie a leash, but any pulling your pet does on these tracks could pull the garage door out of alignment and pose a serious safety concern.
- Know your pet’s whereabouts: Cats like to hide in all sorts of places, even in the space above your garage door when it’s raised. Make sure there’s no pet sleeping or otherwise lingering in or on your garage door before raising or lowering it. Likewise, make sure there’s no pet in the garage door’s threshold before lowering the door. While your door is equipped with safety features that should engage its reversing mechanism when it senses something in the way, these safety features can’t always be counted on — especially if you have an older door. Make sure your pet stays safe by keeping up with its whereabouts at all times.
- Consider a pet door: Some homeowners keep the garage door cracked open to use it as a veritable pet door. This can help age your garage door prematurely, though, and wear down the springs that make it work properly. Instead of leaving your garage door cracked open, consider installing a true pet door in a back door, side door or in the garage door itself. This gives your pet access to your home without creating an unsafe situation — and without wearing down your garage door’s components before their appointed time.
- Test safety features: You should regularly test all of your garage door’s safety features, including the aforementioned reversing mechanism. Testing the reverse mechanism is easy. Simply place a roll of paper towels across the garage door’s threshold. When a closing garage door senses the paper towels, it should automatically begin to reverse. If it does not, you should immediately call for professional assistance. A garage door service provider can identify and repair the problem with your reversing mechanism, as well as any issues with your garage door’s other safety features.
- Schedule regular maintenance: It’s a good idea to schedule regular, preventative maintenance on your garage door at least once or twice a year. This ensures your safety features are working properly, and it also helps to identify and alleviate issues before they become emergencies. Get to know a trustworthy local provider of garage door maintenance and ensure your door is always working properly and safely.
- Invest in quality: You always do best by choosing quality. Even if you have to pay a bit more for your garage door, you’ll get more out of it and save money in the long run by choosing a trusted brand over a bargain-basement, discount brand. Garage doors made by quality manufacturers include safety features you can trust and depend upon over time.
Make sure your entire household is familiar with these tips on how to keep your pets safe around your garage doors. Even your kids can help keep your pets away from danger.
It’s also important to teach neighbors, friends and family the steps you take to keep your pets safe around the garage. For example, consider this scenario:
You hire a pet sitter over the summer while you’re on vacation to take care of your dog. You think this is a better option than sending your dog to a kennel. He might get stressed from being in an unfamiliar place. However, your sitter doesn’t know how to use the garage door properly. While they’re coming inside one day, the dog gets out.
This would be a scary situation for you and the sitter. But you can easily avoid this hypothetical situation, and many others, by teaching other people your garage door safety tips.
We’re Your Source for Quality Garage Doors
At Quality Overhead Door, we serve the Toledo area with high-quality garage doors and dependable garage door services and maintenance. If you have a pet and you want to make sure your safety features are working properly. You can count on us to help.
Contact us today about your home and how to make sure your garage door is as safe as possible.
Additional Resources on Garage Safety & Security Door Tips:
- How to Keep Children Safe Around Garage Doors
- Important Safety Features of Garage Doors and Openers
- How to Increase Garage Door Security
- How to Make Your Garage Door More Secure