Why I Bought a Dog Ramp for My Old Lab

The first time Waylon stopped at the back of my CR-V and just looked at me, I pretended I did not understand what he was asking. He is a yellow Lab, 68 pounds, and he turned 11 in March. For most of a decade he went up into that hatch without a second thought, and I never had to think about it either. That morning in October he put his front paws on the bumper, stood there, and waited for me to solve it. I did not have a solution. I had a towel in the back and a very patient dog.

I am 59 and retired from dispatching school buses here in St. Charles, and I have had big dogs my whole adult life. I also have a husband, Gary, with a bad back. Which means nobody in this house was going to lift 68 pounds of Labrador into a Honda, not safely, not twice a week, not for the next couple of years. In May I bought a PetSafe Happy Ride folding ramp after looking at dog stairs and at a few other ramps. Here is how that went, including the parts I do not love.

I called the clinic and asked Dr. Reyes before I bought anything. That is the rule in this house now. She did not hand me a shopping list. What she said, roughly, was that the goal was to keep him moving under his own power and take the hop out of his day. She also said a ramp is a tool, not a treatment, and that I should watch how he looked after using it and call her if something changed. I am not a vet. I am not a vet tech and I am not a trainer. Talk to yours before you change your dog's routine, especially if your dog takes medication or has a diagnosis on paper.

The ramp itself is 62 inches long, 16 inches wide, 4 inches tall folded, and 10 pounds. Plastic, bi-fold, with a safety release latch that has to be set before it will sit flat. The PetSafe listing gives a 150 pound load capacity and lists high-traction treads, side rails and rubber feet. That same listing names a lifetime warranty in one place and a 1 year warranty in another, so I am not going to quote you either one. Ask the seller.

Ten pounds of plastic is not heavy. Ten pounds of plastic held out over a bumper at 6:40 in the morning, with a dog waiting behind you, is a different conversation.

I set the PetSafe ramp flat on the driveway the first day, no height, no drama, and put a piece of cheese at the far end. Then another. A few days later I set the back edge on the ground and rested the front on the hatch, and we did the cheese again. He is food motivated and he is stubborn, in that order. It took two weeks before he walked up on his own with me standing at his hip, one hand near his harness, not lifting, just there.

He uses it about twice a week now. Saturday morning is Frontier Park, and the other trip is usually the vet or a store run where he comes along. The rest of the time it rides folded in the cargo area, which is the only reason I agreed to a ramp at all. Something that lived on the ground by the back door would have been in the way. I am not going to tell you it gave me my old dog back. He is still slower than he was last fall and he still takes his time getting up off the kitchen floor. What I can tell you is that he gets into the car himself now, and I am not standing in a parking lot doing math about 68 pounds.

Two things I do not love. Ten pounds is not heavy, but it is awkward, and swinging it out of the back with one hand while the leash is in the other is a small wrestling match every time. And at the height of the CR-V's hatch the ramp feels steep to me. Waylon has not refused it, but I watch him on the way up and I keep my hand near him. I also do not use it on ice, or when it is wet, without wiping the treads first. That is not the ramp's fault. That is me being 59 and careful in a Missouri winter.

On a bad morning I put the LOOBANI lift harness on him and steady him with it while he walks up, taking a little weight off his back end and letting him do the walking. The ramp handles the height. The harness handles the wobble. The dog handles the rest.

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

I would tell you to measure the height of your hatch before you order anything, because that number decides how steep this is going to feel, and steep is the thing that makes a dog quit halfway up. I would tell you to buy before you need it, if the budget allows, because teaching a dog a new piece of equipment goes better in a good week than in a bad one. And I would tell you that ten pounds is light until you are holding it out at arm's length over a bumper, so if you have shoulder trouble, let somebody else pull it out of the car.

Mostly I would tell you not to buy any ramp expecting it to fix an old dog. The PetSafe ramp does one job in this house. It gets Waylon from the ground to the hatch of a 2017 CR-V. Everything else, the stiff back legs on the hardwood, the slow mornings, the way he looks at the three back steps, is a conversation for Dr. Reyes and not for a product page. I asked her before I bought it and I would ask her again before I bought the next thing.