# Flying down the stairs...



## llombardo (Dec 11, 2011)

How to prevent this? When I move I will have stairs. My oldest is the only one that has ever dealt with stairs on a daily basis for a while. Once I moved where I am now, no more stairs. She will be fine. I realized when my golden was 7 months he never went up/down stairs, so we took him into our hallway and practiced. Now when I say lets practice, he thinks he is going out to the hallway. I am bringing each dog to the house individually before we move in. Today its the oldest dog. Last week it was Robyn. Her first couple times down the stairs she went kinda fast and tried skipping the last two. Thank goodness I taught her take it slow for agility, that seemed to work and she hit all the stairs. Now Midnite will be the problem, he is "Mr I don't care who is in my way, I'm gonna take them out" The only problem will be in the mornings when we wake up and its time to go outside, they will all be excited and try to rush down there. If I let Midnite go first, he will come back and annoy the rest,even if they are half way down. If I wait to let him down, he will fly and miss more then two stairs. Any suggestions, so that my dogs don't kill each other trying to go down the stairs? The stairs will have carpet on the places where they step by the time we move in, right now there isn't anything.


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## MaggieRoseLee (Aug 17, 2001)

How old is your youngest dog? If I wasn't too worried about young pups and growth plates then I'd just let them figure it out.

And start going out and about to all the many public places in the world with steps so my dogs could start practicing their footwork.


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## llombardo (Dec 11, 2011)

MaggieRoseLee said:


> How old is your youngest dog? If I wasn't too worried about young pups and growth plates then I'd just let them figure it out.
> 
> And start going out and about to all the many public places in the world with steps so my dogs could start practicing their footwork.


That would be my crazy, very energetic male that will be one in July. My female GSD is not even two yet. These are the two I'm worried about, because they are very active together and also very competitive. I'm going to start working him in agility so that might help with everything.


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## MaggieRoseLee (Aug 17, 2001)

Learning the footwork to do stairs IS a skill dogs need to learn. Much easier to just leap up and down skipping steps.

REally great for them to learn the rear end awareness and footwork if you can locate a long flight of stairs in a park? Entrance to library? Local court? School?

Just adding the leash, ONE dog at a time, and enough steps in the flight that they have to slow and think to figure it out is a great start.


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## Mikelia (Aug 29, 2012)

I agree, find an outside set of stairs and practise. When I lived in a house with no stairs we would do basic obedience on a long set of concrete steps near my house. They learned to take each step at a time, stop when asked, back up a few steps, turn around etc...
However, this all goes out the window now that I have stairs - they are so excited to go outside or inside that unless I stand on the bottom of the stairs and command them to slow or ask them to walk with me they never touch the bottom two steps. They are expected not to rush past people on the stairs though and they remember this in their excitement. Dogs lol.


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## TriciaS (Mar 25, 2013)

I taught my older dog (he's a lab) to wait at the top of the stairs until all people are off and I tell him "OK". I have little kids and don't want them getting trampled. My five month old GSD puppy is a whole different animal, but over the next few months she should get better. She's still a crazy, wild pup who flies down the stairs if I can't grab her collar, and we have slippery hardwoods downstairs.


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## Merciel (Apr 25, 2013)

One thing I've done that seems to help dogs go both faster _and_ slower down the stairs (depending on the dog's specific issue) is playing the "Find It" game on stairs. This has helped foster dogs get more comfortable going up and down the condo stairs and has also encouraged Dog Mob to take it a little slower sometimes.

I put the dogs in a Stay somewhere nearby -- within sight of the stairs (usually at the top or bottom) if they're new to the game, out of sight if they're not. Then I scatter treats on some of the steps; the difficulty of the hiding places depends on how well the dogs know the game and how into it I'm feeling (when I'm lazy I will literally just fling treats randomly across the steps). Then the dogs get their release cue to go find and eat the treats.

In addition to the usual benefits of the combined Stay/Find game (impulse control, Stay proofing, asking them to use their brains and noses to sniff things out, etc.), I've found that it encourages the dogs to pay more attention to what they're doing on the stairs.

It does sometimes look like a furry avalanche of chaos so whether this works for you will depend heavily on the individual dogs in your crew, their chemistry as a bunch, and how much tolerance you have for a bunch of dogs playing pinball with each other on stairs. But I've had success with both the base game and variations.


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## Shaolin (Jun 16, 2012)

Maybe try putting your hand on the dogs' back as you go down the steps. I don't know why that worked for Finn, but that kept the up and down the steps zoomies to a minimum. A few weeks of walking up and down the steps just lightly touching his back made him hit every step.


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