June - Still training on the stairs

Tari is still not doing well with the stairs, inside or outside. My mission is to get this solved. One way to do this is to have another dog come over and go up and down the stairs with her. We tried this at Easter to no avail. So I started with having her walk with me down the steps in the garden. She would try to walk down the hill instead of staying on the steps. We continued to do this at least two times each night, up and down. We did this every night for a week and then I took her over to the steps to the deck. She walked up carefully and would not go down. Well, at least made some head way… A couple of days later I was able to get her to go down the steps from the deck as long as I was by her side and touching her collar.

It took another two weeks before she would go down with out my being there. To get her to go down, I took her favorite stuffed pig with us and would throw it for her. This was the ticket! She takes it and runs tossing it in the air and catches it while she is running. Haven’t had much luck catching her doing this it happens so fast. Maybe I’ll get it on video some time. It took her to the end of June to handle the stairs with ease.