Coda and the Stairs

For a very long time, Coda was terrified of the stairs in our house. There are a couple of reasons that I can think of for that. The first, and most obvious, is that there are a lot of them--13, to be exact--and it can be a daunting task for an 11-pound puppy to go up all those stairs. The second reason is that we have hardwood floors, and this extends to the stairs. While it's great from a decor perspective, from a puppy's perspective it's a nightmare. She slides all over the place when she runs, and she spends as much time as possible on the carpet in the living room, or the rug in the bathroom. Now, add the 13 stairs, each of which is only slightly shorter than the puppy, herself, to the hardwood floors, and you have a recipe for a trip to the puppy emergency room. And Coda knew that.

Anyway, we found a solution. We went to Home Depot and bought some stair treads, which are basically just short strips of carpet. We put one on each stair, and we started working with Coda on going up and down the stairs. At first, as expected, it took a lot of coaxing to get her to even go near the stairs. Honey-Nut Cheerios helped a lot there. Also, lots of praise when she went up or down (whether or not we helped her) was key.

So, finally, she's almost to the point where the stairs aren't a big deal. She's going up and down them on her own (down more than up, because she likes being downstairs more than she likes being upstairs), though we still have to do a little bit of coaxing from time to time. She always gets really excited when she gets to the bottom, too, because she likes it when we make a big deal out of her accomplishments.

Brian