Three Deck Steps and One Sling: Biscuit's Story

The three wooden steps off our back deck add up to about a foot of rise. To most dogs that is nothing. To Biscuit it has become a decision she makes four or five times a day, and on the bad mornings she stands at the top and looks down at the yard like it is a river.

She is a twelve-year-old Golden Retriever, sixty-eight pounds. Our vet found arthritis in both hips and one elbow two years ago. For a while she took those steps at a trot. Then she started taking them one at a time. Then she started stopping halfway down and waiting for somebody to come and get her.

The thing that helped is a LOOBANI hind leg sling, and I will get to exactly how we use it. First the failures, because they are the reason the LOOBANI earned a hook by the back door.

I tried the obvious things. A rubber mat at the bottom of the steps. Encouragement, in the high voice I usually save for the vet's parking lot. Then a towel folded under her belly so I could take part of her weight, which worked for about a week before my own back filed a complaint. Towels slip, is the other problem. Dale and I ended up on the deck, two grown adults wrestling a bath towel under a retriever, and I remember thinking there has to be a thing for this.

There is. The LOOBANI sling is a length of nylon with a soft lining that goes under her back end. I take some of her weight, she takes the rest, and we go down the three steps together instead of her standing at the top doing arithmetic. Ten months now, and it has been in the washing machine more than once, which matters more than I expected it to.

Two or three mornings a week the sling comes off the hook. The rest of the time she does the steps herself, and I let her, because I want those legs working as long as they can.

Our house is single story, which I am grateful for every single day, but the floors are hardwood and that is its own problem. Biscuit's back feet slide out from under her when she turns too fast in the hallway. The sling does nothing for that, and I want to say so plainly before anybody buys one expecting it to fix a whole dog. What it does is the steps and the car.

The steps are the main job. On a good morning she takes them herself and the LOOBANI stays on the hook. On a bad morning, and there are two or three of those a week, I loop it under her and we go down slow, one step at a time, me saying steady, steady in a voice that is probably more for me than for her. At the bottom she shakes herself out and walks off toward the fence like nothing happened.

The other job is the back of the Outback. She is sixty-eight pounds and the bumper comes up to her chest, so she cannot get in on her own anymore. Dale drives and I lift. With the sling I take her back end, she gets her front feet on the tailgate, and she does the rest. Ten seconds, maybe. We also own a folding ramp and it is a good piece of gear, but it is a production: unfold it, set it, treat, coax, fold it, stow it. The LOOBANI sling lives on a hook and takes no planning at all.

What it is not: it is not a fix for the elbows. Biscuit's diagnosis covers both hips and one elbow, and the sling only touches the back half. It is also not something she tolerates all day. Ten minutes at a time is what we do. It is a way to get her from the top of three steps to the bottom without her back legs doing work they cannot do that morning, and that is the whole of the claim I am making for it.

She still has stiff days, and I would be lying if I said otherwise. The soft chew she has had with breakfast for about eighteen months helps, our vet suggested it and I would not argue with her. The bed by the window helps. The socks on the hardwood help. The sling is one item in a routine, not a rescue, and I say that because I read a great many reviews before I bought anything and every one of them made whatever it was sound like the whole answer.

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

I would tell you to ask your vet first, and I mean that, because a sling is not a diagnosis. Ours was the one who told us Biscuit's back end would go before her front end did, and that shaped everything we bought after. I would tell you the LOOBANI sling is the simplest of the things we own for her, and the one I would replace first if it wore out. I would tell you to keep it by the door you actually use, not in a closet, because a thing you have to go find is a thing you stop using by the second week. I would tell you it is fine in the washing machine and that you will need that more often than you think. And I would tell you not to expect it to fix a dog. It does one job, and if that is the job you have, it does it well.

Most of all I would tell you that this is a stage of life, not an emergency. Biscuit is twelve. She is slower than she was and she is not going to get faster, and the goal stopped being to keep her as she was and started being to keep her comfortable, in the yard, on the steps, in the back of the car, for as long as that is possible. The sling helps with two of those three. That is worth the hook by the door.