going down stairs

Stairs have always been a huge problem with Mango. A couple weeks into our adventure with Mango, I brought him over to a friend's house to climb up the stairs. At my house, the stairs are really steep and linoleum, too slippery for little puppy feet. In contrast, the stairs at his house were carpeted and gradual, a much better first experience. Even though they were short, they were still taller than Mango by several inches. Going up them was hard, but was nothing compared to going down! He complained a little bit, but in general was okay with the 'up' part. When we turned around to come back down the stairs, the poor puppy stopped dead in his tracks. I tried to coax him down with me by his side, but he still wouldn't move. Still holding on to the leash, I walked to the bottom (four whole steps) and everyone there made as much noise as possible to encourage him to follow me and come down. He tried and tried, but couldn't make it down by himself. I had to pick the little guy up and carry him down the stairs. They were just too tall for him!

We continued to work at it, every time successfully going up but failing to come down without me carrying him. A couple weeks after our first attempt, after Mango put on a couple more inches, we tried once again. He was just tall enough to be able to go up the stairs without it becoming an adventure, and with enough coaxing in loud, excited, high-pitched voices (and plenty of "good boy"-s) he made it down all by himself! From that moment on, he was climbing stairs like no tomorrow.


just an eye-breather from all this text :D Mango and I at the local breakfast joint, Bryan's. We frequent there so often we get a discount just for bringing him in!

That is, until he got his eye on the linoleum stairs. These stairs were much steeper, as well as there being many more of them. With the same process of him having to grow taller, more brave, and lots of coaching, he eventually made it up. Once again, going down was a different story. When he was four months old, he was finally big enough to be able to traverse these stairs. It took him and I about 45 minutes to get down the stairs, with us going down every one sideways. (They were too steep to go down headfirst...too scary!) Every time going down took less and less time, until he could make it down all by himself. Now, we have to put a gate up to keep him from going down and messing with the laundry.

The last and final obstacle for Mango as far as stairs was when my friend moved to a new house. As soon as you walked in the doorway there was a long stair-case that led to the basement. Although these stairs were about as steep as the carpeted stairs, they were linoleum, led to a dark and unknown place, and had no backing! Once Mango got a good look down those stairs, he was scared out of his mind. Whenever we walked into the house, he would hardly go past the doorway because he could see the basement, and was afraid of the stairs. It took him until he was about six or seven months old to be able to go down these, with the same coaching and love as before. Only this time, going up was the problem. Previous to this, he would go up by pushing his paw to the very edge of the step. Now, he would fall through the back! He had to re-learn his entire strategy for climbing up stairs in order to clear this obstacle.

Although all this took time and some TLC, it was worth it for Mango to be able to do his job. Its the little things that you wouldn't realize are scary for puppies (like stairs)!