Sleeping with Dogs ....

*** Note ***

Gary tells me I got some of the facts wrong - mixing up my boxers - ooops!

So I have made a few changes here at 3:00am ....

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Literally ...

Sleeping. With. DOGS...

I like dogs ... OK, more a 'tolerate' dogs. Well, that and they are big furry balls of nothing but love. There's that.

Gary mentioned on Friday night as we were fighting with Charlie up on the bed between us that he sees Charlie as a playmate (true) whereas I see Charlie as a therapist ... not sure about that one - she's a good listener and all, but I don't think she is helping all that much with the crazy ...

So - WHO invited them onto our bed. WHO decided it was OK to sleep with them? Me? No. The floor seems a very nice place for a dog to lie their head at night. No, it was that man I live with, who upon getting in bed at night pats the bed softly and calls out to the dog to come on up.

SERIOUSLY - WHO DOES THAT?!?

Chance: I will call him our first dog - because he really was - we had a dog earlier but had found out that it had a lethal heart defect (runs in our family ...) and had to be put down the first week we had him (Clyde) so Chance. He was my brothers dog and couldn't keep him so we took him in. He was an outside dog and every time you went outside he accosted you jumping and all excited and was a total pain. The first time Gary was gone to Australia, I believe, for about a month, I decided that having a big brute for a dog INSIDE was a good idea - so I invited him in. He immediately calmed down and was wonderful.

I am sure the first thing Gary did upon coming home was invite him onto our bed. As you can see in this photo, he KNOWS hes not supposed to be up there:

Kidding - Chance could look guilty just breathing ...

It was generally a dogpile on the bed:

Chance was the most marvelous dog we had. When a tornado hit our house (the other one in Texas) and a policeman was going door to door checking for injuries - I was on the phone cancelling Jessie's doctors appointment since there was a tree blocking my car and a boat in the road ... he opened the door without me opening the door first. Big mistake! Chance lunged for his throat and got a slammed door in his face for the effort. By the time I ran downstairs and looked out the window, the portly officer was booking it down the road at a speedy pace! He came back and told me I had a very good dog. I never worried about intruders after that.

Chance was a good dog ....

*****

Logan was our second boxer and I don't have any photos of her on our bed. She was purchased as a playmate for Chance, but Chance would not let her play with her toys so she ... improvised. She ate a wall, not a corner of a wall, but dug a hole out of a flat piece of wall, for no reason whatsoever other than Chance stole her squeaky toy ...

After she ate and entire couch ... I called my sister in frustration and asked her if she wanted a dog ... (she said yes). Logan would snuggle with you - like a human and fall fast asleep - softly snoring. She was OUT! When I we wanted to get her off the bed, we would grab her by the collar and drag her off the bed ... splat! Right on the floor and she never, ever woke up just kept snoring softly .... Now that is sound sleeping!

Seriously don't know what was up with her but she did have a personality ...

*****

Now Agatha Wishbone Hurst - or Aggie - was our last boxer and a snuggler:

This is Gary's GQ pose (actually I startled him awake taking photos - it is is sleepy, dreamy look!):

But, today I started to get photos digitized at Sam's - got about 600 done and found this one:

Seriously - how many times did they snuggle on the couch together? And that pile of crap on the corner table concerns me - a Norwegian Troll, a SKELETON, and some Wooden Shoes from Holland - intermingled with crap and flowers - a lovely arrangement?

Aggie, to my horror would burrow under the covers at our FEET! I was always worried she was losing brain cells due to lack of oxygen - PROBABLY lost brain cells due to lack of oxygen. Even after she went to live with others - (see below) she continued this practice - first with Garys mom and then with my sister ... One word: Oddball.

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And then there is Charlie:

The funnest part of Charlie and her sleeping was when we got her in Norway (we did not take Aggie since she would have been in quarantine for 3 months - Norway is a rabies free country and they take immigrants seriously ... - my sister graciously took Aggie and she is living with her today ...).

So Charlie - she was a puppy and somehow Gary must have made it clear to the smartest dog we have owned that she was invited on the bed ... if she could get up there. She would get a running start, you would hear a thump, see a couple of paws clawing their way up, but slowly losing ground as they slipped down past the corner and you heard her fall on the floor. Over and over - but funny as hell! It was so fun, we decided not to help her - it was quite the day she made it.

Her favourite place to sleep? UNDER the bed. Which was fine with me and where she ended up for the night after a little shameless snuggling with Gary. Until that day she couldn't get back out ...

Had to give up under the bed sleeping until now! When she goes to my friends house when I am in Australia - that is where she sleeps. Apparently she has them wrapped around her little paw pad. She sneaks in there right before they go to bed sans a trip outside and a final potty break. She (I just found out) IS COAXED OUT WITH A COOKIE ... every night! She then goes outside and does her thing, then back under the bed until morning. I find this little tidbit of info hilarious! They are so kind to watch her - I really feel I owe them some cookies (and butter, and cookie dough, and cookies ... apparently Charlie has a knack of stealing things off the kitchen counter ...).

So - we have moved past the inviting your dog in out of the rain - to inviting them on to the bed to sleep with us.

It is probably too late to stop this behaviour (maybe a rolled up newspaper? Nah, Gary would get mad if I hit him on his nose with a newspaper). But man, what would it be like to have the dog on the floor and not nuzzling into my ear every morning?

Of course, Gary has a fall back, back out position to all this. At the snap of his fingers, Chance, Aggie and Charlie would / will immediately vacate the bed and take up thier rightful position on the floor, Logan on the other hand would lay there softly snoring, still posed in any position you last posed her in - until you dumped her on the floor. The clincher here? I can't snap my fingers. Oh you heard me ... yeah - I missed the class, something - I just can't do it - so this is strictly a Gary command, blasted man - could have come up with something else to tell them to get off.

So - I just have to yell, push and shove to get the dogs to do anything. They know who is in charge in our house ...