No sliding doors at Shnool's house...no back door, no garage walls inside the fence, and I was very against cutting a hole in the kitchen wall of a brand new house for a dog door. The best, most expensive dog doors are drafty.
Anyway, we hemmed and hawed over what we could do, then Shnool came up with the idea of a "doggie dormer" that fit over the bilco door.
We used regular plywood and cedar 2 x 4's...no pressure treated wood for safety sake, and then put 2 coats of a decent deck stain on it, so it's protected from the elements and it blends in.
As part of our project, we had the fence extended around the bilcos and fenced in a "dog yard" of appoximately 50' x 100', we leveled the fenceline and laid pavers around the entire area. We have Brittanys, and none have ever attempted to go over the fence, so we could do 4' fence, but if someone proves me wrong, we'll install invisible fence also.
Here's the dog yard:
Close up of pavers around the edge:
and we added an auto water bowl also:
The old man (he'll be 11 in July) figured the dog door out immediately. The other 2 were a little nervous about it, as the steps leading up to it are pretty steep, but 24 hours later they were flying up and down the steps like they'd been doing it forever.
Anyway, I thought it was a unique solution to what can't be an uncommon problem.
