I've just finished a dry lining job at a house.
I've done work for them before. They've got 3 dogs. One goes to work with the daughter every day. When I do see it it barks at me constantly and has to be kept in a cage to stop it from stressing out. The other two aren't too bad. They are fine when the third dog isn't around.
The owners have a stairgate to stop the two other dogs from going upstairs, more for the dogs' sake than theirs. One of them has bad hips and whilst it can go up without a problem, it can't come down very easily.
He wanted me to keep shutting the stairgate everytime I went upstairs, the job is in the main bedroom. As you can imagine, with a small bedrooom and a large bed I had about 3 feet to work in! So all materials had to be cut outside. Several trips, shutting the stairgate each time wasn't an option unless the customer wanted to pay the extra time taken to do the job, so we agreed that the dogs be shut in the lounge whilst I'm going up and down the stairs.