Super-sized doggy door helps North Vancouver family coexist with local bear

“We are careful with our garbage and our compost, but we enjoy being on the bear route. We don’t really want him to go away.”

Scheewe moved into the property about a decade ago and said a local bear regularly knocked a hole in the old fence that came with the property.

“I would spend time to fix it and replace boards, and after a while, he just kept breaking it down all the time so we just left the hole,” he said.

About a month ago, the family installed a new fence along the property line, and sure enough, the local bruin showed up and knocked one of the panels out.

But he said the family was worried about coyotes and other creatures getting into the yard — and the bear door idea was born.

“I think it was the kids, we’ve had big dogs in the past, who said, ‘Let’s do a dog door/bear door,'” he explained.

Scheewe installed hinges and a wooden panel heavy enough to keep smaller animals out, which the local bear quickly figured out.

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