Spring is such a rainy season here, especially compared to how it was in Texas. I think the whole neighborhood watched the weather and tries to get the the grass cut before the next rain. We have strong to severe thunderstorms for today, tomorrow, Sunday and Monday. There was hardly a time yesterday that we couldn’t hear a lawn more or two going.
Vince cut our grass with the riding mower shortly after lunch, then later in the afternoon, he cut the steep part with the push mower. Then he decided
At the beginning of last summer, we had 14 Little Giants planted on the side by the road. Vince decided to weed around them, fertilize and mulch so he did that too. That was a whole lot of work and I know he’s glad to have it done.
I worked outside some but the biggest part of my time was spent trying to create a way to keep Oscar off the stairs. When that dog decides he’s going to do something . . there is no stopping him. I finally put him in the crate to keep him off the stairs. When Vince came in, he rigged up something but it’s kinda hard for us to get through so I’m not sure that’s what we’re going to leave there.
We had a folding fence thing up in front of the stairs and that worked but it was a struggle for us to get to the stairs without him sneaking by and when we would go out to the garage, he could get to that door too so we wanted to back the barrier up a bit to block him from the stairs and the garage door. What we have is keeping him back for now but we’re going to have to come up with a better plan.
Rebecca says
Is he just too little for the stairs? If yes, will he ever be big enough that stairs will not pose a problem for his back, or will you always want to keep him off stairs as much as possible?
judy.blog@gmail.com says
Stairs are a problem for his back so we will always try to avoid stairs. We lived 4-1/2 years in the house in MO with Speck and he was 7 years old when we moved there. We tried to keep him off the stairs and because the way the stairs were built, we were able to keep a gate at the top and bottom so that mostly worked. With the stairs here, we cannot put a gate up because it’s open at the top and the wall ends at the bottom at the last stair and even if we could put a gate up, I think the rail would be in the way, plus, while making it safe for the dog, we can’t make it unsafe for the old folks! 🙂
We’ll figure out something eventually I hope. I told Vince today . . we could always totally block off the stairs and go around and come through the back door upstairs but he didn’t like that idea. I was joking but we’re about out of ideas as to how to keep him off the stairs. What Vince did this morning worked through the day today . . we’ll see what tomorrow brings.
Tracy says
–Have you seen the fabric mesh gates that can be used for large open staircases? They attach with velcro straps, or you can make them more permanent. Lots to look at on amazon, I put “fabric stair gates” in to the search box. A few years ago, our older Lab couldn’t make it down the stairs anymore, the mesh gate was easy to use for us and it was enough of a barrier to keep him from falling.
judy.blog@gmail.com says
We did look at those but (1) anything that Oscar can chew isn’t going to work til he gets out of this chewing stage and (2) the bottom of our stairs are open – no walls around the last two so we’d have to put it upon the third step, which would work once he’s past the chewing stage. We had something similar to that in our house in Kentucky where we had four steps going down into a living room. Speck would go running and not see the steps and take a tumble.