u/BagApprehensive1412

Hi everyone,

We have a wonderful (estimated) 2 1/2 year old tripod named Theo. He's about 69 lbs and is a husky/German shepherd/super mutt mix. He's missing his back left leg. He has a ton of energy and no issues jumping up and down off and on our bed, into and out of an SUV, and loves running and playing and jumping around with other dogs.

Edited to add- he got his leg amputated over a 1 1/2 years ago and has likely experienced more of his life with 3 legs than with 4.

We are currently looking to buy a house, and the problem is that many of the houses available to us have at least one set of laminate or hardwood covered stairs. We have seen Theo go up and down really steep stairs at the park, so we know he can physically do it. But he already gets in his head about turning corners in our current apartment in areas that he's slipped on before (we have rubber yoga mats down now to help with that). He will often cry and whine for us to come stand next to him when wants to turn the corner and come inside our bedroom. Though when he is excited, he forgets that he's scared of that and does it no problem.

We are concerned that if we buy a two or three story house, he'd be scared and crying for us to bring him up and down multiple times a day. Our trainer said that wider stairs will be easier for him. I think if there's a landing, that will help too. We are open to installing anything that could help this issue!

I've searched on this sub and seen people talk about grip or traction strips. Does anyone have any additional advice? Would getting carpet installed on the stairs be better or worse than putting grips on them?

It's hard to know what to do since we can't test it out until we have bought the house. Maybe we'll see if someone we know has carpeted stairs and would be willing for us to try it out with him by using treats and rewards.

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This might be an obvious question but I'm the US, what kind of financial professional do people turn on when they're trying to figure this out:

I've already sold stock this year and I know I'll need to pay taxes on it. But the value of the stock has gone up and I am tempted to sell more soon. How do I determine if that will be a wise tax decision? Will the NIIT kick in and if so, what will that look like? Is there someone who can look at all my accounts, the long term gains, short term, what I've already sold and help make the determination?

We have a CPA but she charges $350 per hour just to have an additional conversation with her (outside of the annual meeting to go over taxes).

We do work with an investment management firm but they don't do detailed tax stuff.

Do most CPAs answer these kinds of questions for no charge and we have a weirdly expensive one?

It seems like we have a gap here because maybe most people would get this kind of help from their investment management firm. If that's the case, should we try to find another CPA that's more flexible or has a lower rate for a half hour phone call? We're not trying to avoid paying someone if that's what people typically do in this scenario. We just want to clarify if that's the norm.