Hanna is afraid of stairs

ClantyreSheltie said:
It's only 9 steps! And they are rubber coated and have excellent traction. He would have had to try to fall down them. And they aren't steep. I wouldn't have done it with like the steps into my parents basement, those are much steeper, and carpet covered. They scare me! But these are shallow and rubber.
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I totally trust that you know what you're doing ClantyreSheltie - didn't mean to imply otherwise. It's just that for me with my gangly and somewhat klutzy puppy it's not the approach I want to take at this point.
 
My boy was 7 months old when I brought him home and had never done steps before as he lived in a rancher.

I have a flight of steps to get in my front door, I think there are 9 or 10 of them. So, I would carry him to the bottom step, and put his front feet on it, and when he jumped down, we had a party. Same thing going up, I'd put him on the 2nd to top step and he'd have to go up. Party time !

As he got comfortable doing 1 step up and down, I'd put him a little further away from the top or bottom. 2 steps, then 3, then 5 ... It took about 1 1/2 weeks total but before too long he was going right up the steps on his own.

Now he does steps 3 at a time as he runs all the way up LOL
 
That's basically the approach I was using. Hanna has gone up the 6 steps from her potty area to the deck several times. Problem is she will go up one day and the next day decides she can't do them. Usually after several successful trials a behavior becomes learned - it's not happening this way with Hanna.
 
When Emma was tiny, she really didn't like the steps from the backyard to the deck. I told her if she wanted up,she had to come up. She did.
 
Beau is kind of the same way, not with stairs though, Beau picks everything up off the street and chews them no problem. Yet, I give him a milk bone, and he makes me break the down for him. Silly boys
 
so we live in a ranch- no stairs. when Cranberry was a puppy, we would go to a place with stairs to a deck. one time, I thought it would be a good idea to get him to go up/down the stairs. so he did it fine the first time or two but when we got happy/treated him for it, he stopped doing the stairs and it took a while to get him to do stairs easily.
never worried about Dixie and stairs but she was bigger/older when she came home.
so when Jocu first encountered stairs, I didn't make a big deal and he never hesitated at stairs.
now with Destin, he's done multi-step landing and change of direction to the deck- he never blinked and he had multiple dogs to follow/chase up and donw the stairs - and I never made a fuss so stairs are no big deal for him even though we don't have any......
 
I think they're all different - my little Pom Dawson figured them out all on his own (he just followed me one day) and he was only 6 pounds and younger than Hanna is now.
 
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