sleeping and pets

I think even my anti-pet sister Mackenzie would agree that there is nothing cuter than a dog — who is usually too hyper to be around — sitting serenely next to you on the couch or bed, gently resting her head on your feet or lap while she naps. That’s the hook. That’s what brings us over to the dog side.

What’s the trade? Just your personal space, forever, and especially in the middle of the night.

We recently had a funny experience with our dog Evie. Evie usually sleeps in our bedroom somewhere on our massive Cal King. Well, during one of her midnight expeditions outside, the door to our room closed and she could not get back in. She “knocked” on our door, and we either didn’t hear it or didn’t care to get up and open it. Now, she really likes to sleep next to/on top of people, so she went across the hall and knocked there. Winner!

Groggily, Kayla opened up her room to the puppy, who immediately climbed into her twin bed with her, and cuddled cutely – the hook, remember? Well, eventually, throughout the night Evie starts to stretch out and take over the bed. Kayla, wanting the cute, cuddly puppy to stay, graciously moves out of the way and allows her to take over the bed, until it is far too uncomfortable to sleep.

What to do now? The next plan of attack it to try to get the puppy to move. So you start nudging her with your foot to move over. But she has her own defenses lined up:

• The Acknowledgment: She will at least acknowledge you are there by either turning to lick you, or stretching out even more.
• The Fake-out: This is where she stands up, turns one circle and then lays back down exactly where she was to start, pretending to move
• The Crazy Ivan: Where she jumps off the bed acting as if she were unceremoniously booted, only to jump right back up again. This is a tricky one, because you feel bad that you knocked her on the floor, so you invite her back up.
• Sneaky Sleeper: She will forfeit her spot on the bed, momentarily. She slowly scoots off the bed, and lays down on the floor at the foot, looking comfortable. Once you have dozed back to sleep she hops back up and settles herself into a part of the bed you are not using. You either notice or not, but regardless, it starts the cycle all over again.

Funnily enough Evie gave up trying to get comfortable on the twin bed and came back knocking on our door. As it turns out, Kayla was very tired the next day after dealing with Evie’s defenses. We, however, had a brilliant nights sleep.

new old toy

In rearranging the bedroom to fit the nursery things, we moved the bed to a different wall, revealing several things we thought went missing over the years.

Evie was the happiest of all, seeing as they were mostly old toys of hers she couldn’t reach anymore. When she was a really little puppy, she could crawl all the way under the bed, and did who-knows-what. Gradually she got older and couldn’t fit anymore, and the toys she’d stashed back there were forgotten. Until now.

She has found an old, gross, slobbery, tennis ball that she apparently remembers as her favorite thing. She is constantly gnawing on it and, for the most part, it’s a self sufficient toy!

What does that mean? Well, she can toss it across the room and it’s as if one of us is playing with her. She’ll stand in the middle of the room and drop it from her mouth, it will roll a few feet away. She will stare it down and then, POUNCE! Sometimes the pouncing action will cause the ball to fling itself further away, bringing on more excitement and frantic running-in-place floor scratching as she scrambles to retrieve said ball.

It is hilarity to watch.

Nerf gun fighting + dog = extra entertainment

Ronnie has two pump-action nerf guns with 3″ hollow foam bullets. Now, he found out early on that our dog likes to chew on the foam  bullets when he leaves them scattered around his messy room. As a result, he only has 3 or 4 left that he can find. I thought this would make him sad and perhaps instill a bit more responsibility in picking up his toys, however, it instead inspired a whole new game of nerf fighting.

With his cousin, Chris, Ronnie instigated a nerf fight using 2 bullets. Each fighter gets one bullet. The hunting begins, once a bullet is fired, there is then a race/tackle/wrestling match to get to the shot bullet before the other player. Now this was a fun game in and of itself, but add another player, and you’ve got yourself a real challenge.

Our dog Evie decided to make herself part of the game. The boys shoot at each other, she races them to the fallen bullet, tramples and tackles, then and then runs away with it in her mouth. The opposing fighters must join forces to retrieve the bullet before it is mangled beyond shootability. (yes it’s a word)

Evie has become very good at evading their snatch-and-grab tactics. She doesn’t run too far – she wants to be caught, she likes playing the game, and will eventually surrender the slobbery bullet after a good chase. However, they have to catch her first.

Imagine, three innocent bystanders having a conversation at the kitchen table. Evie will hide under the table, making the boys crawl under us all to get to her. They are reaching and grabbing for her to no avail. Sometimes her tactics are just too good and the boys can’t get her. But, if a parent outside the game demands her to drop it, and come. She obeys, (what a good puppy!) the boys reclaim the bullet, and the fun starts up right where it left off.

Endless entertainment.

crunch…crunch…

“What do you have Evie?”

The dog stops chewing and looks at you all innocent-like. You can stare her down for a couple minutes and she will just keep still and her mouth shut. You eventually look away, back to what ever you were doing, and a couple seconds later it starts again. Crunch. Crunch.

“Mischief, what are you eating? Are you supposed to have that?”

The staring contest continues, man vs. dog. However, this phrase has perked the ears of everyone in the house. Thoughts start flying through their minds: What does she have? Is it from my room? My back back? My toy box? My laundry hamper?

After some more forceful staring, she surrenders and spontaneously spits out what ever she was chewing on. This time, a plastic water bottle cap. ??why?? only Evie knows for sure.

under where?

My puppy likes things that smell.

For the longest time she wouldn’t leave the kids rooms alone, always getting onto the clothes they left strewn about their messy rooms 🙂 I thought it was merely an infatuation with things she had access to. Well, yes and no…

We started closing the kids doors (and demanding a higher level of cleanliness) so she couldn’t get in a destroy their things. And for the most part, puppy terror is over. But there are a few times early in the morning if you leave her unattended that she will rummage through your dirty clothes hamper and pull out, what else, underwear.

It usually happens when I close her in our room so I can take a shower in the morning. I don’t know if she feels the need for extreme closeness or if it’s the (I can only estimate) wonderful odor, but it never fails. You come out of the shower nice and clean and the dog is sitting there in the middle of her bed chewing on your underwear – which she had to dig out of the dirty clothes hamper. Now her chewing has so far not done any damage – just enough to make you wince, groan and then scold…

Why do puppies like the gross smelling things? I mean they call it dirty laundry for a reason!

Cleaning the dog side

Cleaning up after my favorite pet is time consuming. No- I’m not talking about scooping poop, although that is not my favorite part of being a dog owner – I ‘m talking about dog hair. Everywhere.

Our main common rooms (about 500 sqft) are pergo, so we have a three-part cleaning solution that could use a magic forth step if anyone has any hints. First, we swifter. It does a great job on collecting the dog hair from the middle of the room, but crappy with corners. So we sweep the corners, and end up pushing more hair around. Sometimes we vacuum the corners, but we’re not sure if it’s not just moving the hair around, too.

Last is mopping, although, you have to clean out the bucket every 100 sqft or so because it’s full of hair – even after steps 1 and 2. Sometimes even after mopping, you have to go back through with a swifter and pick up the hair that was being pushed around by the mop, but only after it dries.

Of course through all of this we have to keep the dog outside. She’s usually only forced outside when we are not home, so it’s sad to see her looking at us through the windows and sliding doors wondering what she did wrong and why she can’t come in and play with our cool stick toys. (normally she loves to chase the swifter across the room as it cuts and weaves to evade her)

So eventually we have a clean floor (or we just give up trying) and call it a day. We let Evie in and she’s so excited she visits everyone in the house for a luxurious petting, which of course causes her to shed hair all over again. Oh well, tomorrow is another day for cleaning…

The DogSide

Now, to truly appreciate the significance of ME blogging about a dog, you must first have a little background: for the majority of my life, I hated dogs. Hated their hyper, uncontrollable nature, the drool, the barking, the poop on the grass, the refusal to acknowledge your personal space, and the inability of their owners to keep them away from you.

Now, my husband assured me that “our dog will be different.” Yeah, right. So I caved and we got a 8-week old black lab puppy. We brought her home and named her Evie, and she proceeded to pee on every rug in the house. My husband, niece and nephew loved playing with her, but I didn’t see the appeal. It seemed like the only game she could really do was “bite the human” and “chew on anything on the floor.” I have to give her credit though, she was REALLY good at those.

I was adamant about the dog not being allowed on the furniture. No way. I could deal with the sweeping, but it’s embarrassing to see your guests get up from your couch and have to brush dog hair off their clothes. I had hated it when visiting my friends with dogs,(sorry girls – never told you) and didn’t want my guests to have to silently take it either.

We’ll she got bigger and better trained: learned to use the doggy door and go outside to do her business; also, you could now get her to fetch something, but she wouldn’t let you have it once she brought it back to you (lingerings of the “bite the human” game). Every once and a while she would surprise me and bring me over to the “dog side” by laying quietly next to your feet, or licking – instead of biting – your hand to say hello. But sooner than later she was back to chewing on things under the futon where you couldn’t see her.

I was pretty close to the “I told you so” moment when it came time to have her spayed. When she came home from the Vet she was all doped up. She couldn’t even climb into the car, we had to lift her in. She looked so miserable and sad. Seeing her so still and sad and yet puppy-faced, I caved, again.

I invited her up onto the couch… ME! We sat and cuddled – something not possible when she was lucid because she was usually way to hyper and would bite you all the time. Well, it all changed from there. Since she was allowed on the couch, next was the bed. Now I’d like to say that I held firm that she should not sleep under the covers, however, she just didn’t like it!

So, now we have an almost 2-year-old black lab, 70lbs, that sleeps on our bed, lounges on our furniture, jumps on and barks at guests – but it’s ok. She is forever in our hearts. Too bad guests – I guess you’ll just have to endure it.

Come to the DogSide, we love puppies.