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Suggestions re: a new and slippery deck


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We had a 400 square foot wood deck built recently.  We just had the first frozen precipitation, and noticed that as long as the temps stayed below freezing, the deck was pretty darn slick with a thin layer of ice.  We are bringing home a 2 year old female foster this weekend, and are now concerned about what to do if (when) it is covered in black ice again.  She must traverse it to get from back door to yard.  I can only imagine what it will be like when she hits it on a blind run when coming back in to the house.  There are only 2 steps down to the ground, and our other fosters have tended to leap onto the deck while running in from the yard without missing a beat.  So far no issues, but if its icy, I'm worried about a bad wipe out.  What do folks with frozen decks do when their hounds must traverse the deck and it is low to the ground?  We were advised against salting it.  Any other ideas on making it less of a hazard?  Again, it's 400 square feet, so a pretty large area to contend with.  Thanks in advance.

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When we were houndless and care free we scrubbed our decking with biological washing powder granules which stopped them from becoming slippery but I’m not sure how much it would work in a very cold winter - ours are pretty mild. There is anti slip decking paint and strips which you can search for on amazon and see if either of those would suit your needs.

Our current decking is horrendously slippy and rotting in places. My husband was ignoring it until Buddy put his foot through a rotten plank - now we are having the entire garden remodelled to suit the dog 😊

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I put down old towels as a path to the steps, upon which we have rubber step pad-thingys.  I find that they stick to the towel path rather well. 

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The other thing to do is stop them from taking flying leaps onto the deck.  We have a baby gate across the entrance to the deck anyway, but it has the added help of making them stop on their way back inside if we need them to slow down.

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48 minutes ago, greysmom said:

The other thing to do is stop them from taking flying leaps onto the deck.  We have a baby gate across the entrance to the deck anyway, but it has the added help of making them stop on their way back inside if we need them to slow down.

Unfortunately, the entrance is 12 feet long.  I don't think we could find a baby gate wide enough to span the distance.  I am going to look at rubber mats that we can put down when the ice and snow are present.  I can store them in the basement when not needed.  Luckily we live in the South, so this is not a terribly common situation.  The past 2 days of an icy deck made me start thinking, though . . .

Off to start googling . . . Thanks everyone for your suggestions.

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I'm in Ontario...and we already have snow/ice and COLD temps.  We do salt the entrance deck when it's icy....although ours is quite small.  No matting would stay ice-free here. 

You can buy pet-safe de-icer.

Can you put some sort of temporary fencing  ...plastic snow fencing ? ... around the majority of the deck, leaving only a 2-3 ft opening to keep the dog from jumping up and sliding across the wide span?

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3 hours ago, dante2zoe said:

I put down old towels as a path to the steps, upon which we have rubber step pad-thingys.  I find that they stick to the towel path rather well. 

I use the towel path method as well. Works great on steps and on icy yards. 

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leash walk them out when it's icy.  We have been doing that since last winter when it snowed then melted and turned the entire yard into 3" thick of ice.  Our patio is 20' long from door to where the grass starts and we use ice melter and a large towel from the door to about 4' out.  We also have this HORRENDOUS blaze orange plastic fencing (4' high) that goes around one half of the patio side since they would vault from the grass over the 4' wide rocky area (that is around the patio) and they would go down if they hit the icy cement (the other 1/2 is fenced because that's my garden area and turns out Zeke thinks that's his personal diggy-diggy hole if he can get to it.... :D )

having to walk 2 dogs with a fenced in yard might seem silly, but with Larry being 12 3/4 and Zeke 10 3/4 we just can't risk one of them going down :(

 

hope you can find something that works.

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Our deck steps were icy yesterday.  The dogs went down, but they wouldn't come up.  So, I figured, I would get their leashes, walk them around the front and into the garage.  I went into the house, got the leashes and opened the garage.  When I came back to the porch, they were both on the deck waiting for me.  I guess they got nervous that I would leave them outside.  Silly pups.

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6 hours ago, dante2zoe said:

I put down old towels as a path to the steps, upon which we have rubber step pad-thingys.  I find that they stick to the towel path rather well. 

towels are the very very best. just layer them up if they freeze. eventually they will defrost enough so you can wash them and start the process all over again. 

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15 hours ago, cleptogrey said:

towels are the very very best. just layer them up if they freeze. eventually they will defrost enough so you can wash them and start the process all over again. 

This certainly seems like the most efficient, economical and easy solution.  And because we live in the South, we will likely not need them all winter.  Thanks for such a simple and obvious remedy.

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