The Ramp That Took the Strain Off Maple's Back Door Steps

The three wooden steps off my back door never used to be a decision. Maple went down them at a trot, four paws and gone, and I did not think about them any more than I thought about breathing. Then last winter she started stopping at the top. One front paw out, a pause, then a careful step down, like she was reading the grain of the wood before she trusted it. Twelve years old, seventy four pounds, and the shortest trip of her day had turned into the one she dreaded.

Dr. Amari diagnosed arthritis in both hips and the left elbow in February. She said what she always says, that this is manageable and not reversible, and that the work now is keeping Maple moving without letting her hurt herself doing it. It was the second half of that sentence I kept turning over. The ordinary things, the yard, the car, the hall floor, could be the very things that took her down.

What finally took the strain off those steps was a PetSafe Happy Ride folding ramp. Ten pounds, folds in half, stands against the wall beside the door. But I came to it late, and the order I did things in is the part worth telling, because I got it backwards.

Here is the order, and you can judge it for yourself. Cosequin chewables in March, at Dr. Amari's suggestion, the amount the package directions give for her weight, once each morning with breakfast. A Bedsure bolster bed in April so she was not sleeping flat on the carpet. DOK TigerToes socks in May, after her back legs splayed on the oak hall one morning and scared us both. A LOOBANI sling in June for the days her rear end needs steadying. Every one of them did its own narrow job and none of them did anybody else's.

Which left the steps. And the Outback. The sling steadies Maple's rear end on the days she needs it, but it does not walk her down three wooden risers twice a day, and it does not lift her into the back of a car. Before August, Walt and I did that together, him at the shoulders and me at the hips, and I will tell you plainly that seventy four pounds of unhelpful Labrador is a young person's job. We are not young. So the PetSafe Happy Ride came the first week of August, and it has been three months now.

Two weeks of treats and she walks it without hesitating. I have not lifted her once since the first week of August.

Setting it up took me one morning to learn. The top of the ramp rests on the top step and the foot of it sits out in the grass, and the four rubber feet underneath keep it from sliding when she loads it. There are side rails along both edges and a tread surface with some grip to it, which matters more than it sounds like it should, because a dog who slips once on a ramp will not go near it again. I put my hand on it before I let her on. If the angle feels steep, I move the base out a few inches.

The first three days Maple would not put a paw on it. I laid a treat at the bottom and let her take it from the grass, then a treat a third of the way up, then one at the top step. Two weeks of that, morning and evening, and she walks it without hesitating. Not eagerly. She is twelve and she is not going to be eager about anything but dinner. But she goes, and she goes down as well as up.

It goes in the Outback too. For vet visits I set it against the rear hatch, and at sixty two inches long and sixteen wide it is long enough that she walks up it instead of being hoisted. It folds flat for the ride home and takes less room in the cargo area than the grocery bags do. That was not the reason I bought it and it has turned out to be half the value.

Here is what it does not do. It does not treat arthritis, and it has not made Maple younger. She still has stiff mornings, and the sling still comes out on the bad ones, maybe twice a week now instead of every day. It is plastic, it lives outdoors, and it looks like a piece of equipment, because it is one. Set across the back door it takes the whole width of the opening, so I step over it or fold it and lean it against the wall, which takes one hand.

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

If we were sitting at my kitchen table with coffee going, the first thing I would say is that the ramp should have come before the socks. That is no knock on the socks. It is that I spent months solving the flat floors inside my house while the three steps outside my own door were the hardest thing she did all day, and I did not see it because I walked past them a hundred times and never once looked down.

The second thing I would say is to measure your own steps and your own hatch before you order anything. Ten pounds is light enough to shift with one hand, but sixty two inches is sixty two inches, and on my landing it wants the full width of the doorway. The third is to give the dog a fortnight. A PetSafe ramp sitting on a step is a strange new object to a twelve year old Labrador, and the treats are not bribery, they are how she learns the thing is solid.

And the fourth, which matters most: get the diagnosis first. I am not a veterinarian. I am a retired nurse with a Labrador and a story about my back steps. Dr. Amari is the one who told me what was wrong with Maple and what to do about it. Everything after that was me doing the small, ordinary part of the plan.