Central Locking - a warning!

[Guest Mel B]

This is mainly for those of you out there with central locking and dogs (or kids I suppose!). We went away over the early May bank holiday weekend, arriving at our CL late tea-time. We stopped the 'van to select where to pitch up and see what the ground was like. I got out of the passenger door and shut it, my husband then turned off the ignition and followed out of the drivers door and shut it. You can probably guess what happened next ... our 'new' cross heffalump greyhound/staffie (aka the giant spider on speed - legs everywhere) put one of her great clod-hoppers on the driver's door window cill and pressed the door button down - hey presto the central locking sprung into action and locked us out! As our 'van also has it on the caravan door bit as well we were well and truly barred!!! We'd never had this problem before as our other 2 dogs are only little and they wouldn't be heavy enough to push the button. Now, I thought, don't panic, and turned to my husband and asked him to open the doors, "I can't" says he, "Why not" says I ... he just stared at the steering wheel column ... you can imagine what followed ... especially when I realised that he had left the keys in the ignition! AAARGHHH by this point we were tired after being at work all day and following a long journey and all I wanted as a nice cup of tea, not a chance. Fortunately, the one redeeming feature of this whole escapade was that, as it had been a bit warm ... the funny yellow circular object in the sky had been warming us up and we weren't used to it ... so he had opened his door window about 2 inches and left it open when we stopped. The nice chap, Colin, from the Hymer already on site, realised what was going on and came out to help. After trying to ram our arms in at the most weird angles, and Colin's jack extension arm to no avail, we then tried some small tree branches that were lying around - this is where it got even more fun ... the bl**dy heffalump thought it was a new game and kept trying to grab the branches and run off to chew them. I'm sure the other 2 dogs were egging her on! Anyway, I finally managed to find a bit of branch with a kink in it and, after threatening to take the mutt back from whence she came if she tried to pinch it again, my huband finally got it under the door handle lever and flicked the door open. Needless to say we were very relieved and by this time the mutts were bursting for a .... well you get the idea! So the moral of this is? Don't get a great heffalump of a dog and leave it in a 'van with central locking along with your keys. If the window hadn't been open that little bit I don't know what we would've done, it doesn't bear thinking about! The dog, Romy, well she's forgiven, it was only her second outing and we should've know to tie her legs together!!! (only kidding!)

[Guest Tom]

The answer to your plight is so simple but it would be unethical to put it on the forum.! Think on!