June is the Garage Door Safety Month. Your garage door is a handy thing to have at home. When it begins pouring rain on your way home from the grocery store, you can get your groceries inside without getting wet. When you forget your house key, you can still get inside.

Garage doors cause thousands of injuries to people every year, and your pets are not immune to this potential danger. However, there are many things you can do to teach yourself and your household about pet safety while they are around garage doors.

Your garage door adds convenience to your home life, acts as a storage space, and keeps your car safe from the weather. But the garage door also poses a potential danger. Thousands of people are injured every year from garage doors. It’s important to know what risks they pose and how to avoid potential injuries.

Follow our garage door safety tips below to keep yourself, your family, and your pets safe at home.

Keep Your Pets Safe Around Garage Doors:

Keeping your pets safe around your garage doors is simple when you follow a few easy steps. To make sure pet safety is a priority at your home, follow these simple pet-related garage door safety tips:

Protect your garage door components:

Pets are unpredictable. While you most likely don’t think your pet would gnaw on garage door components or wiring, or even licking up chemicals or liquid, you really don’t know about. Make sure to keep them as far away as possible from important garage door components that promote safety. This goes for the tracks, too. Don’t tie or otherwise attach your pets to the garage door tracks that connect to the ground. It could be tempting to use this as a place to tie a leash, but any pulling your pet does on these tracks could pull the garage door out of alignment and pose a serious safety concern.

Know your pet’s whereabouts:

Cats like to hide in all sorts of places, even in the space above your garage door when it’s raised. Make sure there’s no pet sleeping or otherwise lingering in or on your garage door before raising or lowering it. Likewise, make sure there’s no pet in the garage door’s threshold before lowering the door. While your door is equipped with safety features that should engage its reversing mechanism when it senses something in the way, these safety features can’t always be counted on — especially if you have an older door. Make sure your pet stays safe by keeping up with its whereabouts at all times.

Garage Door Safety Tips

Make sure the garage door opener control button is out of the reach of small children.

Do not let children play with a garage door remote controls.

Never place fingers between door sections. Explain the dangers to children and consider pinch-resistant door panels.

Consult the garage door and opener owner’s manuals to learn how to use the garage door’s emergency release feature.

Visually inspect the garage door each month. Look at springs, cables, rollers, and pulleys for signs of wear. Please do not attempt to remove, adjust, or repair these parts or anything attached to them. These parts are under high tension and should only be fixed by a trained door repairman.

Test the garage door opener’s reversing mechanism monthly by placing a 2×4 board in the door’s path. If the door does not reverse after contacting the object, call a qualified garage door professional for repair. If the opener has not been safety1replaced since 1993, replace the garage door opener with a new one with safety beams and auto-reverse as a standard feature.

When leaving on vacation, unplug the garage door opener unit or use your wall console vacation lock security switch (an optional accessory on most openers) to render remotes unusable.

Do not leave the garage door partially open. When activated again, it may travel downward and come in contact with an object in its path. This also compromises a home’s security.

If the opener does not have rolling-code technology, be sure to change the manufacturer’s standard access codes on the opener and remote control, or consider investing in a newer model with rolling-code technology, which changes access codes each time the opener is used.

Never leave the remote control in the car when given to a parking attendant. A stolen remote leaves you more susceptible to home invasion. Always lock your car when left unattended. It’s a small inconvenience for safety and security.