The Smart Chime wireless doorbell from SmartHome has a push button for people, as you’d expect, and it also has a special paw-shaped doorbell trigger for your pet. You’ll hear a musical chime when the door button is pressed. You can set the pet trigger to “dog” to hear a bark or to “cat” to hear a meow when your pet activates his doorbell button. You train your pet to trigger the paw-shaped button to alert you when he needs to go out or when he wants to come back in. (The paw trigger is safe for outdoor use.) All three pieces are battery operated, and the triggers can be placed up to 100 feet away from the chime unit. The Smart Chime wireless doorbell is $35.99.
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Our dog doesn’t bark or scratch when she needs to go out. She goes to the door and stands there until we see her. This has been problematic a few times in the middle of the night when we were asleep and couldn’t see her standing there. 🙂
To solve this problem, I bought a battery operated motion detector at Radio Shack. Before we go to bed, I place it beside the chest-of-drawers so it monitors the area in front of the door. If she goes to the door in the middle of the night, the alarm wakes us up to let her out.
Oh, I also put a piece of tape over the speaker so it wouldn’t be quite so loud.
Unfortunately, our dog isn’t smart enough to figure out how to use the Smart Chime, but I do like the idea.
@Ricky Spears That’s a smart idea. That would work well any time of day, especially if the pet goes to a door that isn’t monitored all day long. Maybe wouldn’t work so well on the outside of the door, though. I can imagine squirrels and the neighbors cat would be constantly setting it off.
I have one of these for my Alaskan Malamute! It took me less than a week to train him on how to use it. The chime is great because I can hear it if I’m upstairs. His timing for pushing the paw is funny too. If I don’t respond to his first ring, he will press it again in 10 second intervals! I can almost hear him saying, “Whats taking him so long to let me out?!”
I’ve had my unit for about a year now and the only issue is the paw button does occasionally stick and ring when no one is around. Shaking out the dirt and giving it some hard taps solves the problem.
You can train your dog to ring some bells that are tied to the door to do the same as the paw chime, but this is a great item if the door is in an area where you really can’t hear your dog’s requests.
One last thing, and its more about training than anything, my dog first used the chime when nature called, which was great. But he then learned that pushing the button = “I get to go outside!”. To solve this, I removed the button for 15 minutes after he does his business to stop him from just going back to the door and pushing the button to be let out. He’s pretty good about the purpose of the button now.
@Icee I imagine the 10-second rings is the dog equivalent of the toddler’s “pee-pee” dance. 😉
I was thinking about my cat and how she rings sleigh bells at our door to go out. I thought to myself, how gets to have a soft ball that could be pressed that hung inside from a door knob and outside that would activate a sound, bark, meow or ring like a door bell. Looked it up on internet to see if already patented and found this. Always thinking up ideas, creative soul that I am. Smile. Good idea, wish I had thought of it first!