But Dad, I Don't Want To Ruin My Doors

Recently our dog discovered the cats' litter boxes and has helped herself to the poop. Twice now she has vomited poop, once when I was home and once while I was out. It smells awful and what a mess! I heard dogs are attracted to cat poop so I was so happy that Abby wasn't . . . until recently.

I know if dad were still alive, he would have a simple solution. He would offer to just cut a small hole that our cats could go through in our two doors to our upstairs rooms that have the litter boxes our cats use most often. This would be a simple solution all right, but somehow if we ever wanted to sell the house, I doubt if people would like holes in their bedroom doors.

I know this would be a viable solution for dad because he cut out the whole bottom half of two of his doors so he could see where the cats were before he opened it. He put pieces of Plexiglas in them and when I was getting ready to sell the house, the realtor gave me a whole long list of things I should fix in order to sell it quickly and those doors were on it. Fortunately, my dad saved everything and I found the panels to the doors close by.

In my case though, I'd really rather not cut up the door. Other than creating a way of access for the cats that the dog can't get through, such as installing a baby gate at the bottom of the stairs, the second most popular suggestion is to put some Cayenne pepper on some poop for the dog to find and it will probably cure her of the habit real quick. This sounds mean to me and she'd probably vomit it up.

My idea is to just train her to leave it alone and stay downstairs, but the dog trainer said she'd be really impressed if I could pull that one off because it's instinctive behavior--it's part of being a dog. She said it would be very hard to do that and the vet agreed. Abby will stay at the bottom of the stairs if we tell her to. I can be upstairs for 30 minutes and come back down and she'll still be there. Now if I could just think of a way to teach her to stay down when we're not home, that would be great!

In case that doesn't work, I have seen automatic self-cleaning litter boxes at PetSmart for over $100 that I though we could try. Does anyone have any experience with these? On second thought, maybe I could use dad's solution on the closet door . . . hmmm. Have to give that some thought.

Anyone else have this problem? Sandee at Comedy Plus told me about an article "How to Stop Dogs from Eating Cat Poop" on in the comments on my other blog where I mentioned I just learned about this happening this week. Thanks, Sandy!

UPDATED 10/31/09: Here's how I solved the problem:
Here's the link to the cats' post about it: Litterbox Fences Solve Poop Problem

To find out more about my book and why I wrote it, read the Foreword here.
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