You may remember this post about teaching Oliver to use the companionway stairs in our boat. And how it went “oh so seamlessly.”
Well, Oliver’s willingness to use the stairs lasted about two point five seconds after that post. 🙁 …SO, we decided we would need to modify our stairs so they’d be a little more Oliver-friendly.
We Jereme researched a few different options for adding traction to these stairs…including various adhesive-type materials (tape, pads, etc.) and even more DIY-solutions, like adding sand to varnish and revarnishing those bad boys.
Eventually, we opted to take the easy route and purchased these rubber/PVC Treadmaster gripper pads.
At $25 for a set of two, these were a bit more expensive than we would have liked (since we needed 3 sets). BUT, the fact that they are waterproof, peel & stick, the right dimensions, and probably a little nicer than the typical gripper tape, we decided to go for it.
I gladly volunteered to take on the “install” portion of this boat project. 😉 Wasn’t that nice of me? It took another two point five seconds to install these new gripper pads (after cleaning each stair so as to make sure there wasn’t any loose dirt or sand).
Oliver was very interested in following me up the stairs after I installed the pads.
However, leave it to Mr. Smartypants to try and climb the stairs while stepping AROUND the new pads. Awesome. 🙁
Eventually, he didn’t seem to mind the pads (thank god since we added them for him!) and doesn’t seem to have much of a problem climbing up the stairs.
But climbing DOWN is another big issue.
I spent about 30 minutes working with him to convince him to come down the stairs, but he didn’t budge. 🙁 I guess that’s going to take a little more training. Only time will tell. In the meantime, we will continue to carry him down like the little baby he is. 🙂
Our little dog is the same way about a lot of things on board. The only way we’ve been able to get her to do them on her own is to stop carrying her. Otherwise she just got used to us picking her up. Oddly enough she has no problem getting up AND down if we’re not around 😉
I think we are going to have to take a tough love approach. 😉 Oliver had no problem at first and then chickened out on us. Hoping he gets the hang of it again, bc carrying him down is no fun.