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Neither of your dogs went in for the kill? I don't think a single opossum that has touched the ground in our backyard in the last 7 years has made it out alive. And even a few that tried staying on the fence. The dog or dogs would hit the fence, knocking it off and into our yard, and into their waiting jaws.

As for getting it out of the house, the dogs helped with that. As for going for the kill, they would have except we had them by the collars to keep them from tearing the house up trying to get to it.

A little adder to the story, a few years ago it had stormed most of the night but had stopped about 6am, long enough for the dogs to go outside. I normally leave the house about 5:30 but had overslept due to no power. As I finished getting dressed, I heard the dogs raising cane in the back yard. Now, in the corner of our yard is a telephone/electric pole that has about a 6" gap behind it. Anyway, I go out with a flashlight to get them away. I figured it was probably a possum they had pinned in and I was right. The big dogs couldnt get to it nor could our little dog. However, the little dog, the brave sole she was (she passed away 2 years ago), saw the tail of that possum and proceeded to bite down hard. the possum squeeled and came out running up my leg with teeth that I know were 10" long, scared me, and as I backed up rather hastily, I slipped and fell in the mud, then the possum takes off and all 3 dogs run across me to get the possum (they did). My wife comes out, the dogs have the possum, and me laying in the mud with muddy paw prints running across me. Must have been a funny site but not to me at the time.

We have the electronic dog door and collars for our dogs so that we don't have to mess with locking or unlocking it. I started out with it over a regular dog door just for this reason. I didn't want to wake up with a raccoon cuddling with us.

gregthehand wrote:We have the electronic dog door and collars for our dogs so that we don't have to mess with locking or unlocking it. I started out with it over a regular dog door just for this reason. I didn't want to wake up with a raccoon cuddling with us.

Our electronic door failed to operate so often that I got the impression I was the field tester for the company. Eventually I started objecting to replacing parts myself and requested that they send a service technician because it was inconvenient to remove the door and return it, even if I did get to wait until the new door arrived before doing so, and they just sent me a plain old two flap through the wall setup. And I have had them send me new parts for it too.

ROFL, when the door did work, which wasn't often, one of the dogs discovered that he could open it just by standing near it, and then walk away, but only just far enough that the collar's proximity kept the door open.

jimlongley wrote:ROFL, when the door did work, which wasn't often, one of the dogs discovered that he could open it just by standing near it, and then walk away, but only just far enough that the collar's proximity kept the door open.

Why? Why would a dog do such a thing?

Dave2 wrote:

jimlongley wrote:ROFL, when the door did work, which wasn't often, one of the dogs discovered that he could open it just by standing near it, and then walk away, but only just far enough that the collar's proximity kept the door open.

Why? Why would a dog do such a thing?

He just liked to look outside, I guess. It was quite funny observing it, he would approach the door and it would go up, and then he would back off a little and lie down facing it, every once in a while the mechanism would start to lower the door and the sensor would trip and it would just drop a fraction of an inch and go back up.

The other funny thing to observe was when the door was working the dogs had the timing down pretty well, so they would charge the door upon detecting a threat in the yard, and get there just as it went up. And then the wire rope would break (lost count), the capstan would break (twice), or the sensor would fail (once) and the door would not go up, and we would have a pile of struggling dogs that had just rammed the door head on.