A Stressful Staircase

Last week our office had our annual retreat at the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center. It was nice to get out of the office and the Center was beautiful. Morey thought he was going to be able to run and play there because it looked like a park and he kept looking at me as if to say “well, aren’t you going to take off my vest and leash and let me run?”. The pathway was made of large stones so it was challenging for me to navigate because it was so uneven. Add to that an excited Morey who kept pulling forward and then backing up to the heel position again and it made for an interesting journey!

My co-workers and I arrived at about the same time and Morey was happy to see all of them. He seems to get extra excited when he sees people he knows in unexpected places. We had the small library building to ourselves and since we were going to be there all day, I left Morey off leash. There was a large open room with a long table with a winding staircase with open-backed stairs that led up to a second level which went around the edge of the building and overlooked the first level.Two of my co-workers climbed up the stairs to the second level and Morey went with them.

Once he was upstairs he became rather concerned. He could look down and see me (the second level had wire railings). He started whining and running around the edge of the second level, obviously unsure and confused about how to get back down to me. I then realized that I don’t know the last time Morey went up or down a flight of stairs. Obviously he doesn’t do that with me, so it could actually have been more than a year since Morey has gone up stairs.

When my co-workers came back down, so did Morey. I was afraid he might be scared to come down the open-backed stairs but he scrambled down without a problem, although his style was not very graceful. When he got back on the first floor he did a quick shake off (a calming/stress-relieving action) and came over to me with a wagging tail. After checking in with me he started running in circles around the room-blowing off some stress. I let him continue his antics for a few minutes and then called him over and settled him on the floor. With that excitement out of the way, he was his very good self the rest of the day.

In the future I will try to be more aware of giving Morey opportunities to go up and down stairs. It wasn’t a huge problem and he recovered quickly, but I want Morey to be able to be confident in situations with stairs. I know some people train their dogs to use treadmills for exercise so maybe I should train Morey to use a StairMaster! : )