I had a pretty hilarious job today which involved adding locking bolts to the sliding door of a Gold Coast house. The owner of the house had returned home after work several times to find the back door wide open and the house in a dishevelled state. It didn’t appear that anything had been stolen but someone had sure gone through the rubbish, licked the benches clean and sometimes managed to open the fridge and make off with the defrosting meat.
Suspect No.1? The Dog Dunnit. Don’t know how, but she did it.
The chief suspect was the dog but my new client just couldn’t work out how she was doing it. The sliding door was locked he was sure of that… How on earth was she opening it. Not only that but the crafty devil knew that what she was doing was wrong so she never attempted it when anyone was home.
My new client put his laptop on the kitchen bench with the WebCam facing towards the sliding door, gave his dog a pat on the head and then drove off down the street returning an hour later to see what was going on. Indeed the door was open, the garbage again having been ransacked and the evening’s defrosting pork chops were nowhere to be seen. The recording showed all.
Mission Impossible
The clever canine sat at the back door after the car had driven off and barked several times over a 10 minute period to ensure indeed her master had left the building and she was able to go about her mission impossible plan without witnesses or interference.
First, she banged her nose into the corner of the glass door and then jumped up with her face still pressed against the glass. This was repeated several times until the latch of the glass door was pulled up and over the locking mechanism. Then it was a simple task of jumping up on the glass door booking clause on the handle and transferring her weight from left to right to slide the door open. Then it was all over red Rover with the contents of the kitchen garbage, anything on the benches and anything inside the fridge now fair game.
Usually she exited the building to hide all evidence she was the culprit… but sometimes she forgot she was supposed to be being discrete and she went and lay down in one of the beanbags inside and went to sleep!
He tried all sorts of things to shame her from this behaviour. He showed her the video to show that she was busted. He even drove the car down the street and snuck back inside and hid in the kitchen jumping up and yelling at her after she broke in. These deterrents lasted for a while but apparently the temptation of the garbage and its strong call to our clever canine was just too much. Bad behaviour kept being repeated.
Whilst my client saw the humour in it and of course was proud to have such an intelligent dog he was sick of cleaning up the mess and buying extra servings of pork chops. I was called in to properly secure the door. This was done with a minimum of fuss by adding some sliding door bolts. The bolts not only make it harder for dogs to open the door they provide better security from burglars who might try the same trick assuming they were brave enough to get past the dog.
Whilst you may not have a dog burglar causing sliding door havoc….they are notoriously insecure and need bolts adding to ensure they are harder to open and in some case to ensure your home contents insurance is valid.
If you need help with securing your Gold Coast sliding doors, give us a call today on 0406 333 300.