The Great Escape!

We keep our puppy, Casper in the kitchen and utility room at night and when we go out.

It's a long run through the kitchen, and his bed is in the utility room where he has plenty of space.

We don't have a door to the kitchen, you get to it through the dining room via an archway. So to stop him escaping, we use a baby gate.

However recently (the past week or so) he's learnt he can climb over the gate! He only seems to do it when we get up in the morning and he can hear us pottering about upstairs. He gets excited, leaps over the gate and bounds upstairs.

It's not really a problem when we are in the house, but we'd rather he didn't do it when we weren't there as he likes to chew things! Also, we have a builder coming in soon and we need to be able to keep him secure.

Any ideas what we can do? It's difficult to tell him "No!" as he only jumps the gate when we can't see him (we're upstairs)
I've tried raising the gate by 6 inches this morning but he can still get over and I can't raise it any more otherwise he'd be able to squeeze under the gap at the bottom.

Any ideas??

PS - here's a picture of him:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/danieljackson/2834956525/

what a sweetie (took me a few seconds to find him in the pic )

the only thing I can suggest is what I've heard other people do - that is to have two baby gates - one above the other. Never tried it myself so no idea how well it works (i.e. in terms of you being able to get in and out of rooms easily) but hopefully others can give you their experience.

The only other thing is whether you could get something (maybe some mesh or something like that) to add to the top of the existing baby gate?)

How about a cargo net from a car, they have clips to clip them on and off, a couple of eyelets screwed into the frame to keep it in place. a got a few that came with cars but I think you can buy them on ebay or halfords. Just a thought.

Just be careful that what you do doesn't allow him to get trapped, had a friend whose young dog got caught in the mesh they put on to raise their gate while they were out & struggling broke a leg.

I think Argos may stock extra tall doggy/baby gates. Might be worth a look?

The trouble is, now he knows he can get over the one you have, he may still attempt to get over a higher one, injuring himself or getting a leg caught.