How a Lift Harness Helped Maple With the Back Steps

The steps off my back door are three pieces of pressure-treated lumber, each one a little shallower than the last. For eleven years Maple went down them at a trot. In June she started stopping at the top and looking back at me. No whimper, no limp, just a pause and then a slow lowering of her hind end, one step at a time, the way you take a staircase in the dark. She is a twelve-year-old spayed yellow Labrador mix, seventy-four pounds, and I am sixty-five and not as strong as I used to be. That pause is why I bought the LOOBANI lift harness.

I want to be clear about what I knew and did not know. Dr. Amari diagnosed arthritis in both hips and the left elbow in February. She did not tell me Maple needed a sling. She suggested a joint supplement, which we started in March, and she told me to keep Maple moving and keep her lean. The steps were my problem to solve, and I solved them the way I solve most things: badly at first.

For a few days I used a rolled bath towel under her belly. It worked about as well as you would expect. The towel slid, it bunched up, and I had to crouch to hold it, which is its own kind of trouble at my age. Walt held the door and I held the towel and neither of us was much help to anybody. Then I ordered the sling in the second week of June.

What arrived was a nylon sling with a soft sheepskin-like lining, a pair of handles, and a small storage bag. It weighs under a pound. It is not a full-body harness and it does not go around her front. It goes under the belly, ahead of the hind legs, and you take the weight there. The care tag says machine wash and I have washed it twice. That is the whole of it. There is nothing to charge and nothing to fuss with.

The first trip down the steps took about a minute. I worked the sling under her, took up the slack, and let her set the pace. She went down one stair, stopped, and went down the next. What I felt in my hands was not the whole of her weight, more like a share of it, maybe a fifth, and that was enough. Her back feet landed square instead of sliding forward. At the bottom she shook herself out and walked to the grass. I stood on the last step and had to put a hand on the rail.

I am not going to tell you it gave me my old dog back. What it gave me was a way to help that did not hurt either one of us.

How we use it now. Mornings and evenings, and any trip to the yard when she comes off her bed slow. I stand on her left, both handles in one hand, and let her walk. You are not lifting the dog. You are taking a share of the weight for as long as she needs it. On the flat kitchen floor she does not need it at all, and I leave it folded in the bag. The rest of the time it hangs on a hook by the door where I can reach it with one hand.

What it does not do. It does not treat arthritis. It does not make her hips better, and it does not take the place of Dr. Amari or the supplement or the bed or the socks on my oak floor. There are still stiff mornings. On a damp one she will stand at the top of the steps and wait for me to come out, and that is the sling's job, not a fix for the joint. Anything about pain medication is a question for your own vet, not for me.

The first week was clumsy. She did not care for the lining under her belly and stood still like a table while I worked it into place. I got the position wrong twice and she told me so by walking out from under it. By the fourth day she stood and waited for me to put it on, which is the closest thing to a compliment I have had from her since she was a puppy.

In August I bought a ramp for the Outback and the steps. It folds and stands against the wall by the back door. Now the ramp takes the three steps on the morning and evening trips, and the sling comes out on the days she is stiff, and for the two steps up into the side door at the vet's office, which the ramp does not fit. When I am deciding what goes in the yard bag and what stays by the door, the sling is the first thing I reach for.

What I'd Tell You If We Were Sitting at My Kitchen Table

I would tell you that more than thirteen thousand people have left a rating on this thing, and what that tells me is it is not custom equipment. It is a length of nylon with handles, and that is the point of it. You do not need a plan for it and you do not need to practice. You need the sling in the right spot and your own back out of the lifting.

I would also tell you to call your vet before you call Amazon. A sling will not tell you why your dog is slow, and a vet can. Five months in, this is the most useful thing I have bought for her, and I am not going to pretend it turned back a clock. What it did was get her down three wooden steps without the pause, and get me through a wet New Jersey autumn without throwing my back out. If that is the help you are after, this is the help it gives.