Woman builds custom stairlift for her elderly rescue pugs
Our pets are often an infinite source of affection, cuddles, and sunshine in the home, and there’s really nothing that we wouldn’t do for our furry friends.
Aside from taking care of them and giving them love, sometimes they need a little bit of extra attention as well as they get older or develop medical issues.
This is our opportunity to return all their loyalty.
After all, it’s important that your pets can live as comfortably as possible, especially when they reach senior age. Elderly dogs can’t exactly move around like they used two, and mobility tends to decline rather quickly.
These three elderly rescue pugs can certainly relate.
They had been having difficulties climbing up and off the stairs in this home.
The pug trio make an absolutely adorable team and listen to the names Georgen, Bodhi, and Sam.
Eventually, their energy levels started to slow down a little bit and they weren’t able to run as much or as fast as they used to.
Owner Sonya Karimi wanted to make life as comfy as possible.
However, these stairs were a large nuisance and sometimes even an obstacle for the three adorable pooches. Georgen is the oldest at 13 years old, but even his younger 10-year-old siblings were already starting to have some mobility issues with the stairs.
Clearly, something had to be done about the pesky stairs.
Sonya didn’t want them to struggle at this point in their lives.
So she adjusted her stairs to make them fully dog-proof.
Sonya, who lives in New Orleans together with her husband Zach and four pooches, works as an occupational therapist.
She has some experience working with elderly people, and if she could help out people at her job, she knew she could do the same for her dogs.
She was inspired by what she saw at work.
She figured that some dogs could definitely use something to make their life easier too.
Posted by Sonya Karimi onFriday, July 10, 2020
She began crafting what she proudly calls a “Doggievator” stairlift.
And even though her youngest pooch, the four-year-old Emery, doesn’t really need the Doggievator to get from one floor to another, she absolutely loves the stairlift as well!
Posted by Sonya Karimi onFriday, July 10, 2020
It all started once Bodhi started suffering from knee issues.
He even needed ACL surgery for it which cost over 3000 dollars. Bodhi is definitely the one that makes the most use out of the Doggievator, although all the other four-footers can be seen on it regularly.
Posted by Sonya Karimi onFriday, July 10, 2020
During the quarantine and lockdown period, Sonya and Zach had plenty of time to build the stairs, which is quite simple but gets the job done perfectly.
It’s also operated by one of them so that accidents can’t happen.
When one of the dogs enters the small box, Zach or Sonya press a small button that transports the dog between floors slowly, so that they’re always comfortable and relaxed during the trip.
The pugs got the hang of the stairlift rather quickly!
Even though the concept was simple, the execution and design definitely weren’t something you could fix in a week.
It took over three months until the Doggievator was completed, and Zach’s parents, both former engineers, helped out with the technical things.
See a video of the stairlift in action below!
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Source: YouTube – Caters Clips, The Animal Rescue Site, Facebook – Sonya Karimi, Instagram -@sonyakrayz