The Day My Senior Yorkie Climbed Onto the Couch on His Own Again

Pepper is thirteen, a Yorkshire Terrier who weighs about six pounds, and for most of his life he got onto the sofa the way small dogs do. He picked his spot, rocked back, and jumped. Last spring he misjudged it. He came down short, yelped once, and then stood on the area rug looking at me like I had moved the couch. I had not. He was stiff in the back legs after naps, he had a loose left kneecap, and Dr. Salazar had already told me his hips had mild arthritis. I am not a vet. I am just the person who watches him every day, and I knew the jumping was over. That is when I started looking at the COZY KISS dog stairs.

For a few weeks I did what a lot of people do. I lifted him onto the sofa. Then I lifted him down. Then I worried that I was doing it wrong, because he would tense when my hands went under him. I looked at a ramp. I measured the living room and decided a ramp would eat too much of the floor. I looked at a set of foam stairs and kept putting it off. What finally pushed me was watching him stand at the sofa and wait, not even trying, because he had already decided the distance was too far. That is when I ordered the COZY KISS stairs.

The COZY KISS stairs are three steps, foam, and the listing gives them as 15.7 inches high, 22.4 inches wide and 15.7 inches deep. The same listing says the foam supports up to 80 pounds, which is far more than Pepper needs at six pounds. I am not saying that because I think a big dog should use them. I am saying it because I checked the numbers before I bought them, the way I check the numbers on everything now. I am sixty-three. I have learned to read the fine print.

They arrived vacuum packed. The listing warns that it takes 24 to 48 hours to return to its original shape, and that was true for mine. I opened the box on a Thursday, set the stairs on the living room rug, and by Saturday afternoon they looked like the picture. I did not put them on the tile. Our house is tile almost everywhere, and I could see the stairs sliding if I put them near the sofa without the rug underneath. The one area rug in the living room is where they sit, pushed right against the sofa.

He did not jump. He climbed. That was the whole victory, and it took ten days of treats to get there.

The first day I put a treat on the first step, Pepper took it and backed away. The second day he put one paw on the step. The third day he took the treat and stepped down. I am not going to pretend he was brave. He was not. He watched the stairs like they might move. I sat on the floor beside them and kept my hand still. By the end of the first week he would go up one step and wait for me to carry him the rest of the way. By day ten he went up all three on his own.

The day he climbed onto the couch on his own again was a Tuesday. I was watching a women's college basketball game, and he came around the side of the sofa, put his front paws on the first step, and went up. He did not hesitate at the top. He walked onto the cushion, turned around twice, and lay down with his chin on the armrest. I did not cheer. I did not want to startle him. I just put my hand on his back and felt him breathing.

The COZY KISS stairs did not make Pepper young. He still has arthritis. He still has the loose left kneecap. He still has slow days, and on those days he looks at the stairs and decides not to bother. I do not push him. I bring his food bowl to him and we stay on the floor. What the stairs did was give him a way to do one thing he had stopped doing. One thing is not everything. It is still one thing.

What Changed Around the House

I moved the stairs once, to vacuum under them, and Pepper stood at the sofa and looked at the empty spot. I put them back. That is how I know he is using them, not just tolerating them because I put a treat on the step. He has a route now. Rug, first step, second step, third step, cushion. He does it in the evening when the game is on. He does it in the morning if I am in the living room. He does not do it when Ray is running the vacuum, which seems reasonable to me.

The other thing I noticed is that I stopped lifting him as much. I still lift him into the car, one hand under the chest and one under the rear, because the car is higher and I am not going to ask him to climb into a car. The stairs are for the sofa. That is the job. I have a harness for the one step at the kitchen door on bad mornings, and grip socks for the tile, and an orthopedic bed on my side of the bedroom. None of it is a cure. It is a set of small fixes that let him keep some of his own routine.

What I'd Tell You If We Were Sitting at My Kitchen Table

I would tell you to measure your sofa first and measure your dog second. The COZY KISS stairs are 15.7 inches high, so they fit our sofa. If your sofa is taller, they may not be the right set. I would tell you to put them on a rug or a non-slip mat, because a foam stair on bare tile is an accident waiting to happen. I would tell you to give it ten days and to use tiny treats, not meals. And I would tell you that if your dog yelps or refuses to bear weight, stop and call your vet. I am not a vet. Dr. Salazar is. This is just what worked in my living room for my thirteen-year-old Yorkie.