We Have A Ramp

We have a ramp!  And we've had it since January!  Can't believe I'm just now getting around to blogging it!  Buford has been having trouble with stairs for a long time now.  So long in fact that this past January my husband spent his birthday building a ramp in our garage for Buford.  Up until this week, Buford still climbed the stairs every night at bedtime to come sleep in our bedroom with us and again went down the next morning.  He had difficulty and it would take him a long time to get going, but he only had to do it once a day and he wanted to do it he just had to take his time.  Four nights ago, we stopped letting him climb the stairs and closed the gates to keep the dogs downstairs at night.  Buford has fallen on the stairs a couple times recently coming down them in the mornings so we had to put a stop to it for his safety.  I fear that our time with Buford may rapidly be coming to a close (that's another story for another post).

The three stairs in our garage leading out to our backyard was a bigger challenge in many ways because Buford had to go up and down them several times a day.  It was hard to watch him struggle so my very handy husband went right to work on a ramp :)  It has actually been through a few enhancements.  The original ramp was a little too steep so Tracy re-did it and extended it out to the very maximum room that we had while still allowing space to open the door at the end of it.  He added railings and even a couple months later added the boards along the side because Buford was doing his excited spinning on the ramp one day and almost fell off the side of it.  And of course, we added the rug for traction right away.  Anyway, the ramp was an instant hit!  I thought the dogs may have a hard time adjusting to it, but they had no problems at all.  Even the kids loved it and thought they had a new playhouse at first, lol.

Here are some pictures of the work in progress and the final product that I'm finally taking time to document (I also have a video of the first time the dogs used the ramp, but it's too big to upload here):

   

   

Finished product - didn't actually take these photos until May!