Hi We live in a large 2 bed apartment with the entrance on the ground floor and the main living area on the first floor (13 stairs). We are really keen to buy a lab puppy due to both having grown up with this beautiful breed, however, we are aware that labs can experience hip problems in later life and therefore would not want to risk this arising due to the dog using the stairs 2-3 times a day. They are not steep stairs but are just wanting to gain some advice on whether this would prove an issue? Any advice appreciated.
I don't think it is an issue for grown dogs at all. All of our dogs have made many trips up and down stairs every day, and none of them have had significant hip problems. People caution about keeping young pups off stairs and it is probably a good idea, though we pretty much let our pups decide when they were able to do stairs. I know that is not the current recommendation.
We live in a flat up 2 flights of stairs and we were recommended by the vet to avoid stairs until she was 6 months old. We still have a stair gate in the flat for the internal stairs but she goes up and down the main ones now. I warn you though that they get very heavy and it does get quite hard. I had to carry Luna until she was about 27kgs! From about 5 months we would do maybe once a week let her walk down or up to get her used to the stairs and also train her not to run on them.
We live in a two story house with many stairs. I was trying to follow the advice about keeping our puppy from using stairs until I stumbled and fell while trying to carry a squirmy puppy downstairs. We tried blocking the main staircase in our house but she kept wiggling through the mesh gate, which was the only way to block it. I finally gave up. It wasn’t worth breaking an ankle or hip over, particularly since my wife and I are in our mid-60s. I talked to our vet about it, and he said not to worry.
