Benjamin’s Musings

Dog beds

My first dog refused to sleep in a dog bed. She always wanted to sleep with a member of the family, in their beds. This was a problem because she was a Labrador Retriever, and though she wasn’t the biggest lab you’ve ever seen, she was a good, mid-sized dog. She also had the doggie disease of taking up the entire bed. She would start out the night lying calmly and collectedly at the foot of your bed, in a compact fashion, with enough room for you to stretch yourself out and be comfortable. But inevitably you would wake up that same night after midnight to find yourself half hanging off the side of the bed, arms dangling down towards the floor, with the dog spread-eagled on your pillow, violently trying to spoon you, twitching in rabbit-chasing sleep, drooling doggie dream drool all over your nice clean pajamas.

I put up with it while I lived at home. She was mostly my dog, after all, and I liked having a warm body in my bed, even if it was sometimes smelly and always hogged the covers. But when I moved out to go to school, the dog was still not happy if she wasn’t sleeping with a human, and my parents and sisters were not best pleased with the dog trying to sleep with them every night. So they went shopping for dog beds. They tried first the regular circular ones with raised edges. My dog didn’t like that at all. They’re fine for when you start sleeping, but later in the night when you want to sprawl out and kick your paws, then you don’t want to be constrained to a circle anymore. Next they opted for the simpler, but more durable, pillow-like dog beds: giant rectangles of stuffed fabric with fire hydrants and paw prints all over them. But my dog, if you hadn’t guessed yet, was picky. What was finally successful was several of the pillow-like beds covered over with a blanket and spread out in the living room. This simulated a human bed to her. She still got cranky from time to time and wanted to sleep with a person, but usually she would settle for her makeshift dog bed.