a canine conundrum

As it works in our home, the furry friends we live with are in one form or another, rescues. By way of cats, we have One Eyed Jackie - she'd be a One Eyed Jack but her vagina begged to differ - who has gone through life looking like she's winking at you. We have Creamsicle - affectionately known as Cream - who is cross-eyed, drools, and sticks his tongue out at all times. And on the stories go. Land of the Misfit Cats is how Tara describes our home. Our dogs are also rescues. We found Chief at a shelter when he was a year old and now Cooper, a throwaway puppy at 8 months of age. While we wouldn't have it any other way, we're also more than aware that with rescued animals come issues. Sometimes big ones, sometimes small, some that keep you awake all night long.

When we met Cooper we were told that he'd been in a crate 20 hours a day from infancy. He knew people - he got to see them from his crate - but that was about it. Eager to please but with no manners or training whatsoever. We were also told that he had "stair issues." Simply put, he had no idea what stairs were, they terrified him, and he refused to go up them.

We live in a two story house.

That, and the fact that Cooper's "outside" was going to be off the second floor told us that we had our work cut out for us before we even brought him home. It took a few days and a ton of patience on Jay's part, but he got Cooper to tentatively go up the stairs. With every passing day, he got a little braver and went up them a little quicker. We assumed the problem was solved. What we weren't expecting was for Cooper to slip on one step like he did last Friday. He didn't fall, didn't hurt himself, but that one little slip of a paw was all it took for him to declare that he was right and that stairs are akin to dog hell. And that was that. He refused to go back up those stairs. What he decided would be a perfect Plan B though was for us to stay downstairs - forever - with him. When he discovered that we had no intentions of going through with his Plan B he quickly thought of a Plan C - he's going to sit at the bottom of the stairs the entire night whining, whimpering, and yelping.

Which is how I found myself in the kitchen, online, at 4 a.m. looking up dog phobias and whether stairs might be included in said phobias. Come to find out that they are a common phobia with dogs - learn something new every day - and usually stem from never being introduced to stairs as babies and dogs that have been confined. The older the dog, the worse the problem is until it's almost impossible to get them to use stairs. Fair enough. Now to find solutions to the problem.

Put a treat on every second step - He went on a hunger strike.
Put his leash on him and walk him up. - He dragged me to the front door instead.
Carry your puppy up the stairs. - My 100 lb puppy?
Carpet your stairs. - Sigh ...

I knew that we had an old area rug rolled up in the furnace room so I dragged it upstairs, measured the stairs, measured the rug and started cutting. Eleven pieces of chopped up rug are now stapled to our hardwood stairs.

And Cooper runs up and down those stairs happily.

When he isn't flopped out on the couch.