Need help with teaching an English Mastiff to navigate stairs?

Question

I have a 4 year old male, 200 lbs, and 5 1/2 feet long Mastiff. I can not seem to get him to go up or down the stairs. I have tried treats, sandwich meat, and a leash. Please anyone with any ideas would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks in advance.

Answer 1

Hi. I had this problem with a dog and I trained it by breaking it down into little parts. You need to find a short set of steps, just two or three. This is less intimidating for the dog. Get him to go up the steps, and then immediately give him a treat and praise like mad. You can also use a command - I used 'stairs'. After a little while you should have a dog that will run up and down a few steps with no problem. Then you have to tackle the stairs at home. Use a good strong leash and have another person to help you considering the size of the dog. Stand at the bottom of the stairs, show your dog the treat, and then, in a really confident voice, give the command. Reward your dog for any attempt to climb the stairs at all. Get your helper to stand behind the dog to stop him turning around, but do not push the dog or yank him up with the lead. Loads of praise and a titbit in front of the nose should finish the job. After he does it a couple of times, you should find that he loses the fear of it and will do it quite happily. Good luck!

Answer 2

Try placing a treat on the first step. If he takes takes it praise, praise, praise. place the treat on the 1st step a few more time. Than place treat on 2nd step and so on. Keep training sessions short, maybe 5 minutes and do two to three 5 minutes session a day. Try not to progress to fast. Maybe by a weeks time he will be able to go all the way up the stairs. Keep it fun with lots of praise of how he is such a brave boy. After the training lavish him with playtime or his favorite activity. What you are trying to accomplish is to show your dog the stairs are good and treats can be found on them. Do not force your dog up the steps as that might scare him even more. you want the dog to make his own decision to get the treat and not be forced to do so. Eventually you will be able to place a treat at the top steps and have your dog get it.

good luck

Answer 3

I once had an elderly lady for a friend. She had a wonderful little dog. A mix of some sort. She had the dog trained well and it behaved very well. Learn here https://tr.im/BIncI

She kept an uncovered candy dish on her coffee table with candy in it. The dog was forbidden to eat the candy. When she was in the room observing the dog he did not even appear to notice the candy. One day while she was in her dinning room she happened to look in a mirror and could see her dog in the living room. He did not know he was being watched. For several minutes he was sitting in front of the candy bowl staring at the candy. Finally he reached in and took one. He placed it on the table and stared at it, he woofed at it. He stared some more, licked his chops and PUT IT BACK in the bowl and walked away. Did he want the candy, oh yeah. Did he eat it? Nope. They can be trained that well but most, I'll admit, are not trained that well. When I was a young boy, maybe 5 years old. We had a german shepherd. He was very well trained also. My mom could leave food unattended on the table, no problem. She would open the oven door and set a pan roast beef or roast chicken on the door to cool. No problem. He would not touch it, watched or not. But butter? Whole other story. You leave a stick of butter anywhere he could reach and it was gone. He was a large shepherd so there were not many places he could not reach. Really, I think the number of dogs trained to the point they will leave food alone when not being supervised is very small indeed.
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Now if we are talking obedience training, not food grubbing, that is a different story. Way back when I was first learning obedience training one of the final exercises was to put our dogs in a down/stay and not only leave the room but leave the building for 15 minutes. The only person that stayed was our trainer, not the owners. Most of the dogs in my class did not break their stay, which would be an automatic fail. I'm happy to report my dog was one of the ones that passed.

Answer 4

I only had to worry about the three steps to get into my house, and I assume you mean a flight of stairs? I would defintly try to start on a few steps first, and work your way up. My mastiff never seemed to know where his back feet were, and although he started on our porch steps at 12 weeks, still fell on a regular basis! "Grace" is not a part of these guys!!

If you use the suggestions here and still don't get anywhere, you may want to talk to your vet. Four years is middle age to these guys, and joints tend to detoriate, causing pain. A good supplement can help, and your vet may suggest you take some weight off of him. Even if he is not overweight. You may want to visit the mastiff site through www.AKC.org for more help. I was somewhat clueless as my first mastiff started to age, and my vet was only a little help, as he had very little experience with giant breeds. Visiting with other owners helped alot!

Oh, I forgot to add, eventully we had to add a ramp for our dog.

Answer 5

I have heard that some dogs just don't like stairs. Most times it just takes a lot of patience. I know one person who had a lab like that....loved everyone and was a very good dog, but didn't like stairs. He had a two story house so What he did was start putting the dogs food on the stairs. He started on like the second or third step and gradually worked up. It seemed to work quite well for him. Hope this helps.

Answer 6

are they carpeted stairs? if not, do they stairs have treads and not risers? My puppy had no problem going up and down carpeted stairs, but hated our basement stairs which have no riser. I used to just stick him in the middle and leave him there until he came down or went up. He learned that way. With a 200lb dog that won't work. I was told when I was training my puppy that hiding the area where the riser should be by taping paper to cover it helps.

Answer 7

This site has lots of useful tips: http://www.paw-rescue.org/PAW/PETTIPS/DogTip_FearOfSteps.php

It has suggestions for helping dogs that are afraid of stairs, but if your dog isn't actually scared (just doesn't know how to use them), scroll down to the section called "Another smart, novel technique".

Good luck!

Answer 8

you may instruct her to open doorways, change on lighting fixtures fixtures, carry you your shoes, instruct her the names of specific gadgets, and so on... you additionally can take any tricks from the record of tricks my very own canine knows, to get some techniques. to this point she knows those tricks; sit down stay Lay Down Roll over Shake Bow Come talk Beg crawl Bubbles Drop it pass away it carry it (brings something she has in her mouth to me, like a toy, and so on.) Get squeaky (gets her squeaky toy) pass (is going away whilst i want my area, or runs around the backyard like an insane canine, consistent with area and tone) Up (Jumps interior the lower back of auto, onto the mattress, or over a fence, consistent with the place I factor) Get in (gets interior the bathtub) Stand severe 5 severe ten (the two paws) Spin Get your tail (comparable as spin different than she tries to snap at her tail) positioned your head down (Taught herself this particularly, in simple terms gave a recognition to it - places her head down on your lap or on fixtures) touch (Touches my hand) lower back up (walks backwards) She additionally knows sentences like "do you want to decide for a walk?" or "do you want a tub?" yet those are not quite tricks.. She additionally opens/closes drawers, performs frisbee, and might pass off leash whilst around my community, it quite is a reasonably rural section. do no longer believe her yet someplace else, however.

Answer 9

Invest in an elevator.