My dog, Kiba, is a rat terrier and he’s a year and a half old. He had four surgeries on his hip before he was a year old and after each surgery he was sentenced to a certain amount of time in confinement. During this period he wasnt allowed to walk anywhere or do anything, he laid down in his kennel for his sentence and his total confinement time was 6 months. Now that he is better and out and about he refuses to use the stairs in our house or anywhere for that matter. Kiba was used to being taken up and down the stairs with someone carrying him which wasn’t a problem since he’s a 10 pound dog but now he still has a fear of going up or down them. I’ve tried taking him half way up the stairs so he’d have fewer stairs to climb, I’ve tried putting a treat at the top of the stairs, wiggling his favorite toys in front of him to get him to come up, putting his harness on him and trying to gently coax him up the stairs which didn’t work since I ended up practically dragging him up. I’m at my wits end and dont know what else to try or if Im doing something wrong or if he ever will be able to use the stairs again as Im tired of carrying him up and down. He runs and jumps onto the couch just fine so I’m wondering if it’s purely psychological as well
Talk to your vet. He or she should be able to tell you if he should be going up and down the stairs. If he’s been cleared for that activity, he may just not want to do it anymore. Is there somewhere you could start that has just one or two stairs, like a deck or patio?
If the vet says stairs are ok, you just need to recondition him to using them.
Clicker work is great for this sort of thing, but if you don’t want to go that route you could just feed him on the stairs. Start at the foot of the stairs and work your way up, but only moving up when he’s happily going to the lower level. Remember that he needs to be confident about going down, too.
Also, if he offers any interest at all in the stairs on his own, throw and instant party about it, lots of happy praise and treats (if you can keep some handy for quick reward). The key is to make it fun, not stressful.
Do you have any other dogs? If not maybe he just needs to see another dog going up the stairs.
In re-reading this I realize I wasn’t all that clear…
I meant to say feed him his meals on the stairs, and stretch the training out over days/weeks (as long as it takes, really). He might figure it out really quickly, or he might not, but it’s probably not something you’ll teach in a day. And yes, watching/following another dog isn’t a bad idea either.
My dog shot up and down the stairs in the first few days, but after that she could go up but would refuse to come down, and stand at the top whining until someone carried her down. We thought she must have fallen downstairs and got frightened. She did eventually learn to come down again.
Just an anecdote…
We rescued a very old, lame, mostly blind dog awhile back. She refused to walk up our stairs, and we were considering trying to place her elsewhere, because we didn’t want her trapped on the landing for the rest of her life (and, she was 70 lbs, so carrying her up and down the stairs wasn’t easy). We had been giving her some TLC and exercise, and she was walking better, but she still wouldn’t go up or down the stairs by herself.
One night we had a tremendous thunderstorm, and when I got up in the morning, she was upstairs with the other dogs. I assumed that my wife had gotten up in the middle of the night and somehow got her to go up the stairs, but I found out that the dog did it all by herself. After that, she would go up and down by herself, although I used to guide her down, because she would sometimes trip and fall.
So, with enough incentive, I suspect that your dog can re-learn how to climb stairs.
I agree may be there is some physical reason he cannot go up stars .May be he is in pain with hip.