Front Porch Update

I am on a dog forum and someone recently had their dog accidentally slip out their front door and attack a leashed dog who was being walked in front of the house. That landed the dog and owner in hot legal trouble. Now their dog is labeled "dangerous", has to walk with a muzzle on, etc. All sorts of legal hoops for them to jump though.

Shortly after reading that, we had company over and they accidentally let both girls slip out the front door. They ran into the neighbors back yard. It was fine - dogs were collected and no harm no foul. BUT the neighbors own dogs and they easily could have been out. It would have been bad. So very very bad.

So that let to some upgrades! We hired someone to make our front porch look pretty but also functional - keeps that naughty Violet of ours behind bars!

Before

After

Why don't you love us, mommy?!

WHY ARE WE IN PRISON!!?

The front gate is pretty slick. It has the main door that will get used every day but it also opens ALL the way in case you ever need to bring in something big like furniture.

This gate auto-closes after you. So even if my visitors are forgetful, the gate will do the job for them.

The usual entry (propped open by my gorgeous chewed up tennis shoe)

Here it is opened up all the way. Sort of. The gates open all the way up flush with the walls they hinge on but I'd need something to keep them there.

The view from the inside. Baby gates to keep them from bolting out the front door but if that fails (like it did in my opening paragraph of this blog post), the front porch should hopefully catch them. That's the goal anyway!

Now we just need to paint the gate white and it'll be done.

Also on the list of fixes is adjusting ALL the gates on our property to auto-close. With every gate we have that closes behind you, we lessen our chances of an accidental puppy escape. So besides the front porch gates, there are a total of 4 other gates on our property that are getting fitted with auto-closing mechanisms.