I use to put a slide on the wall side of the stairs for my pups to get down, it wasn't long before they were running up & down stairs then the stair gate went up.
As my two offspring were 5 and 3 years old when we moved from a flat into a house, I did not need stair gates. But I did for the Griffon puppies - and even then they tried to climb over them when they were out of their pen! I used two nursery fireguards to make a large pen, and had to cannibalise a third nursery fireguard to put over the gap at the top, as even as young as four-weeks-old they could climb up and over...
