We’re dog sitting for a friend of my brothers and said dog Judas has a few quirks.  Our dog Max needs a bit of a lead to catch things thrown at him whereas Judas could pluck a side-armed pistachio from the air.  Judas also has egregiously long claws that make walking for him something akin to secretaries that have to type with their palms because of having 4″ acrylic nails/talons.   He also has a tough time navigating stairs to the point where if he’s at the top and wants to go down he simply barks endlessly.  Today we got a lick of possibly why he does this: he built up such momentum going down that when he tried to brake at the bottom, his paws couldn’t catch (his claws were lifting his paw pads) that he smashed into the wall at the bottom of the stairs.

Engineering!

We’ve installed a doggy crash pad consisting of a bath mat and a pillow and he now ascends and descends stairs with abandon.