PetSafe Happy Ride Ramp vs Dog Stairs for an Arthritic Large Dog

If your big dog has sore hips and you are trying to choose between a ramp and a set of dog stairs, here is the short answer. For a dog with arthritis in the elbows as well as the hips, a ramp is usually the kinder of the two, because it asks for one long push instead of a series of hoists. For a dog who only needs a hand up onto the couch or the foot of the bed, stairs are usually the practical choice, because they fit in the room. I bought the PetSafe Happy Ride Folding Dog Ramp the first week of August for my twelve year old yellow Labrador mix, Maple, and three months later it is still standing against the wall beside my back door, where I can reach it with one hand.

I have not owned dog stairs, and I am not going to pretend otherwise. There is a lot of confident writing on this subject from people who have owned neither product, and I would rather tell you what I actually watched than build a case. Maple is 74 pounds. Dr. Amari diagnosed arthritis in both hips and the left elbow in February, and since then nearly every decision in this house comes down to one question: how many times a day does that elbow have to lift her front end. My house is a single story with oak hardwood in the hall and kitchen. The back door has three plain wooden steps down to the fenced yard. The car is a 2018 Subaru Outback. Before August, Walt and I lifted her into the hatch together, one of us at the front and one at the back, and it was not good for any of the three of us.

	PetSafe Happy Ride Ramp	Dog stairs
How the dog moves	One steady incline the whole way up, no edge to step over	A series of separate lifts, one paw and one rise at a time
Footing	High-traction treads, side rails and four rubber feet	Varies by set, many rely on carpeted treads or a strip on each step
Floor space when set up	62 inches long and 16 inches wide, so it eats a strip of floor	Shorter footprint for the same rise
Storage between uses	Folds in half to about 4 inches deep and stands against a wall	Most sets are fixed and need a permanent home
Moving it	10 pounds and folding, one hand to carry, rated to 150 pounds	Varies widely, and a fixed set is not built to be carried
Indoors beside a couch or bed	A long run of floor in a small room	Tucks against the furniture, less run needed
Getting it to sit on the back steps	Needs a flat, dry spot at the top and somewhere to stand when wet	Sits where it is put
Best for	A dog whose elbows or shoulders are the limiting joint	A dog whose hips are the only sore part

Where the PetSafe Happy Ride Ramp Wins

The ramp wins on the thing that pushed me to buy it. Our back steps are low, but they are three separate lifts, and by midsummer Maple had gotten to where she would stand at the top of them and think before starting down. Set over those steps, the ramp turns the whole drop into one long slope. She walks it. There is no moment where she has to hoist her front end over an edge and then catch her weight on the other side, and that moment is exactly what a sore elbow cannot do comfortably. Three trips out and three trips in every day is eighteen of those little hoists, and by evening she was feeling all of them. I am not going to tell you the ramp fixed her arthritis. It did not. It removed one hard thing from her day, six times a day.

The second thing it gets right is portability. The PetSafe ramp weighs 10 pounds and folds in half, so when it is not in use it stands roughly 4 inches deep against the wall by the door. I can carry it in one hand and hold the screen door with the other, which sounds like a small thing until you are 65 and doing it in the rain. The listed capacity is 150 pounds and Maple is 74, so there is room to spare. Four rubber feet sit on the wood at the top. When we go to the vet it goes in the back of the Outback and comes out at the hatch, and I set it up myself instead of standing in the parking lot waiting for Walt to come around the car.

The treads are the part I looked at hardest, because I have oak floors in the hall and a dog who has already been surprised by them once. The ramp has high-traction treads and side rails along the edges, so there is something for a paw to feel and something for me to see. What I can honestly tell you is limited by the calendar. I have had it since the first week of August, so it has not been through a New Jersey winter. I bring it inside when the weather turns and I do not leave it out overnight. If you are buying in November, plan on where it goes when it is wet, because a plastic ramp with wet treads is not a surface I would send an arthritic dog up without checking it first.

Where Dog Stairs Win

Stairs win on floor space, and it is not close. The ramp is 62 inches long and 16 inches wide when it is set up, which is more than five feet of run through a doorway or across a porch. In my house that is fine, because the back door opens onto a small landing and the yard is right there. In a narrow galley kitchen or on a tight city stoop it would be in the way every single day, and a mobility aid you have to step over stops being a help. A set of stairs stacks the rise instead of stretching it out, so the same height takes a fraction of the floor.

Stairs also win indoors, at furniture. Beside a bed or a couch the rise is short and it never changes, and the dog is making the trip once or twice a day rather than six. A short carpeted set parked against the frame is easy to live with and easy to leave there. If your dog needs help getting onto the sofa in a room where you also need to walk, stairs are the item that fits. I will flag again that I have not owned a set. This is me reading listings and thinking about floor plans, not reporting from my own hallway.

The honest limit of stairs is the mirror of the honest limit of the ramp. Stairs still ask the front end to lift, one step at a time. If the problem is hips only and your dog picks up her front feet without a thought, that is fine. If the elbows are involved, stairs rearrange the work without removing it. That is the whole disagreement between the two products, and it comes down to which joint is sore, which is a question for your vet rather than for me.

What Three Months on the Ramp Looked Like

A Tuesday in September, ten past six in the morning, I let Maple out. The ramp was already on the steps from the night before. She walked down it without stopping, did her business, came back up, and went to her bed by the radiator. Two years ago that trip was nothing. In June it was a thing I stood and watched with my hand out. What changed is not that she got better. It is that the hard part of the trip got taken out. I stood in the kitchen with my coffee and did not have to spot her, and that is the sort of progress that does not photograph well but changes a household.

The car is the other half of it. The Outback hatch sits high off the ground and Maple is 74 pounds with sore hips, so for months Walt and I lifted her in, one of us at the front and one at the back. She hated it and so did my lower back. The September appointment was the first one I did alone. I backed the car up to the flat part of the driveway, set the ramp at the hatch, and she walked up it while I held the leash. Dr. Amari watched her come in and agreed she was moving better. What the ramp does is give her a way to keep doing her own moving, which is a different thing from making her well.

What it did not fix: the hall floor. The ramp lives at the back door, and my kitchen and hall are still oak, and Maple still wears her socks indoors during the day, because that April morning when her back legs went out from under her is not something I want to repeat. It also did not replace the sling. On her stiff days, the ones after a long lie-down or a damp morning, I still put the sling under her belly for the walk from the bedroom to the door. The ramp took over the steps. It did not take over everything, and I would be selling you something if I said otherwise.

Three trips out and three trips in every day is eighteen small hoists, and by evening she was feeling every one of them.

Who Should Buy Which

Buy the PetSafe Happy Ride ramp if the elbows or the shoulders are involved, if your dog is getting into a car with a high hatch, if you have three or more steps between the door and the yard, or if you are the person doing the lifting and your own back has opinions. Buy it if your dog is over 50 pounds, because that is the size where lifting stops being a quick favor. The two things I would check first are the rise you actually need and the floor space you actually have. Sixty two inches is a real number once it is standing in your doorway.

Buy the stairs if the hips are the sore part and the front end is fine, if the only place your dog needs help is a couch or a bed, if the room is tight, or if your dog is small enough that one step is not a big lift. They are also the easier sell to a nervous dog, because a step is a thing dogs already understand and a long sloping surface is not. Do not buy stairs for an elbow dog and expect them to solve the elbow. They will not, and you will have spent the money to learn it.

What I would tell you at my kitchen table: whatever you buy, give it two weeks. Maple would not touch the ramp for the first week and I nearly gave up on it. Treats at the bottom, no pushing, and by the fourteenth day she was walking it like it had always been there. And ask your vet which joint is the problem before you spend anything, because the answer changes which of these two makes sense. It is not a choice you have to guess at, and it is not one I would make for another person's dog.