Aesthetic Stairs for Aging Dog

We all get older, and this gradual accumulation of years takes its toll on our bodies. We get to be less flexible, get tired more quickly, and physical feats that used to be no big deal at all suddenly turn into formidable obstacles. This is true for dogs as much as for humans.

Our cocker-spaniel Shyka is at least 14 years old by now. I say at least, because when my wife adopted her from the streets, back in 2009, the vet estimated her to be at least two. Converted into human years, she must be scratching her centennial soon (with so much rough estimation), for which she is still amazingly lively. However, getting up on the couch, where she enjoys our company while we watch movies, has become a bit hard for her.

Good Thing She Has Her Stairs!

A number of years ago when she started having back problems we made her a pair of stairs out of a piece of foam. As it turned out, a couple of sessions of acupuncture and ozone therapy worked wonders, and she got her flexibility back (check out this post I wrote for more details on it). However, since then she has gotten more and more used to using her stairs. So we decided to cover up those foam pieces with a nice looking denim fabric.

Starting With The Foam

At first, there was a long piece of foam, 10 x 40 x 120 cm. This we cut into three pieces, the first to 60 cm, the next to 40 cm, and the top one one to 20 cm length. This gave us three equal steps of 10 x 20 x 40 cm. Then for a long time nothing happened. And I didn't even take any more photos until we were in the middle of the project.

Gluing and More Gluing

My wife cut out the pieces of jeans to cover the stairs, and using white school glue (Elmer's glue, wood glue, Resistol, PVA, all the same) pasted the three steps to each other, before gluing the fabric onto it. To make sure it stays attached, she pinned the edges in place.

Once the glue had dried, she had to cover the edges with another fabric strip, to keep them from coming apart. This needed a more heavy duty adhesive, for which she used a glue-gun.

On the bottom of the doggy-stairs she attached a piece of rubbery bathroom mat, so it would not slide around on our tiled floor.

Done!

Finally, after years of waiting, and only hours of completing, we have two neat looking stairs for our dog to climb up on our couch with us.