The Harness That Got My Dog Back Up the Back Steps

The first sign was not a limp. It was Murphy stopping at the top of the two concrete steps at our back door, looking down at them the way you look at a staircase in a strange house. He is a golden retriever mix, 71 pounds, ten years old, and he had gone down those steps four times a day for nine years without ever thinking about it.

For a few weeks I blamed the weather. Then I started going down first and holding a bath towel under his belly. That worked for about three steps. The towel bunched and slid, and by the time we reached the yard I was more out of breath than he was. In January 2026 Dr. Sandoval diagnosed arthritis in both hips.

In April I bought the LOOBANI lift harness, size X-Large, on Amazon. I want to be exact about what it is, because the wording on the listing made me expect something else. It is a soft sling. A padded panel goes under his hips and it supports the rear end only. It does not cross his chest and it is not a full-body harness. I have never owned a full-body harness. I know them from labels and from one I saw at the vet's office.

Mine hangs on a hook by the back door. On vet days it folds into the storage bag that came with it and rides in the back of the 2019 RAV4. The material is nylon and it goes in the washing machine, which turned out to matter more than I expected. It weighs a little under a pound.

The first morning I took some of his weight on the two steps and let him do the rest. That is the whole trick. It took me a week to stop overcorrecting.

It did not make his hips better. It made the two steps at my back door something he would still try.

Before this, the towel was the reason I stopped taking him out the back. It slid out from under him on the concrete and once he sat down hard. The sling does not slide, because I am holding it and he is standing in it. That is a small difference on paper and a large one at seven in the morning with a dog waiting on you to decide.

I taught physical education and health for thirty-one years, and the principle is the one I used with students coming back from an injury. You support, you do not carry. If I lift him off the ground he learns nothing and I wreck my back. If I take just enough weight to get him over the edge of the step, he keeps doing the work his hips can still do.

The steps are one job. The RAV4 is the other. He will not use a ramp and I am not able to boost 71 pounds onto a seat. The sling handles that in about ten seconds and neither of us gets hurt.

Honest limits. The LOOBANI sling does nothing for the joints themselves. It is a lifting aid, and no product treats, cures or reverses arthritis. It also does nothing for the front end. If your dog is lame in a shoulder, this is the wrong tool. Size matters. X-Large is right for him at 71 pounds and I would not guess at it.

It would be tidy to say the sling is the reason he still goes out back. It would also be dishonest. He takes a joint chew every morning, fish oil soft gels in his breakfast, and a mussel chew around noon. Dr. Sandoval approved each one before I added it. Three supplements overlap and I cannot tell you which did what. The sling is the only purchase where I can point at a specific moment and say that is different now.

I use it every stiff morning and on every vet visit, and on the good days it stays on the hook. Some weeks that is twice. After a cold snap it is every day. He has never once fought it, which surprised me, because he fights the nail clippers like I am taking a leg.

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

Buy the lifting aid sooner than feels reasonable. I waited three months because I kept hoping to find something that fixed the hips instead of something that managed the morning. Nothing fixes hips. Ask your vet what your dog is actually dealing with before you buy anything, LOOBANI included. Then weigh your dog and buy the size the chart calls for. Keep the walks short and keep doing them, because a dog that stops moving gets stiffer and no sling undoes that.

Start with the steps your dog already hesitates at. For us that was the two at the back door and the RAV4, and seven months on, those are still the only two places I use it. You do not have to turn it into a system. You have to get him down the steps.