Save Money: Measure Your Pet

Save Some Money! Measure your Pet!

1. Here's what to do:

Do Not measure your pet directly.

2. Open a door as wide as he needs to comfortably walk through. Use a treat for motivation. Measure that width. You need the flap to be at least that wide. It doesn't need to be wider.

3. Realize that the top of the flap should be mounted at, or better an inch, over his height at the top of his shoulder (the withers).

4. The lower the bottom of the flap, the better. In no case, should the "step-over" exceed 1/3 of the height at the withers. Pay special attention if your dog is particularly deep-chested or low slung and adjust accordingly

Example:

He's 20" at the withers and the top of the flap he uses is at 22". The flap is 15" tall so he's stepping over 7" (that's the "rise") This pet door suits General just fine.

Since this panel pet door has a "user-adjustable rise" feature, we'll probably end up lowering the rise to 5" and the top of the flap to 20". That'll make it easier to step over when he's older.

If you look at General standing right next to his pet door, you'd say "impossible". But actually it suits him very well.

If we also had a much shorter dog, we might have required more height in the flap to get the bottom down lower. The taller flap, in turn, would probably be wider as well.

Look for "high aspect ratio" flaps to get more height for a given width.