Since Scout has had so many back problems, she is now forbidden from jumping, climbing, and pretty much anything that puts stress on her back (jumping up and down). This means that one of her favorite locations in our entire house, the couch and love seat, is no longer allowed. She cannot jump onto the bed, her former favorite location, anymore, and so we lift her up (what we call "elevator service") and down when she really wants to get up here. However, with the couches, she can physically get up there herself--she's just not allowed to. This has created some problems. We bought sheets and pinned them across the couches so that it looked like it was too high to jump onto. This worked very well...with Scout. Enter the Galoot. Digory can jump on just about anything--he's much bigger, taller, and stronger than Scout is. He jumps right up on the couch, collapses the sheet, and Scout says, "Oh, thank you!" and follows him up. Ugh.
Another problem is the love seat, which is in front of the front window. Digory especially likes to look out this window and it has been hard to keep him from doing it. We finally piled up lots of cushions there and covered them with the sheet to prevent Digory from kicking them off (the actual height hasn't discouraged him at all--he's perfectly capable of jumping from the floor to the arm of the couch). Scout cannot get up there now, but that doesn't stop her from really, really wanting to. Especially when Daddy is gone. When Daddy is gone and Mommy is home, we must stare out the window until Daddy comes back. It's just the natural order of things. So you can see the dilemma if couch access is unavailable.
So Scout tries her second solution--barking--to either 1) tell the couch to come down and make itself accessible to her, or 2) call me over so I'll come and pick her up and put her there. Neither happens, but Scout is steadfast. She just barks and barks and barks--and if you've ever lived with Scout you'll know what I mean when I say that she has a lot of staying power. She barked on and off for the last 2 hours while Kevin was shopping. Sheesh.
It's actually pretty heartbreaking because she was formerly allowed up there and she really doesn't understand why she can't go up anymore. I feel so bad that she can't do something she really wants to do that I would otherwise not have a problem with.
Posted by Shelby at October 19, 2007 08:13 PMShelby, is there any way that you can get either a ramp or doggy steps for her? They would both be easy on her back and then she could still come and go as she pleases without having to jump. I see those things all the time in my Fosters and Smith catalogs.
Oh wait, here's a ramp and here's some stairs.
Staz--Yes, I think that's what we're going to end up doing. The problem is that Scout hates ramps and stairs and will avoid them if she can. A while ago Kevin built a ramp for the back porch so she can go to the yard by herself and she'd avoid it altogether, so we blocked off the top part of the stairs, and then she'd take a couple of steps down the ramp and then jump over to the stairs on the side and take those, so now we had to block the stairs the whole way down. Sheesh. So I think we're going to have to find a way to block off everything but the ramp for the couch. And then how to hide it when people come over because it is a wee bit embarrassing, the lengths we go to allow our dog to do something most people forbid in the first place :D.
Posted by: Shelby at October 20, 2007 10:49 AM