Awake (or: Dealing with Beagle Guilt).

zchamu — Wed, 16 Jul 2008 13:24:00 -0500

So yeah, it's 3:10 a.m. and I'm awake. What of it?

I should be nice and relaxed. We spent two lovely weeks in Nova Scotia and PEI, sunning and seafooding and boozing and sleeping and generally unwinding. And yet here it is, the middle of the night and I'm wide awake.

It's guilt. Massive, raging guilt. 40 pounds of guilt. Well, maybe 38 if it's been a good dog food week. You see, we've evicted The Beagle from the bed.

My poor doggy. It's not his fault he's a high maintenance princessy pain in the ass. From the time he was a puppy, he has always been the kind of dog who wants what he wants. And generally, he wants it now. And one of the things he has always wanted was to sleep in the bed with the pack. And you know, if he just jumped up at the foot of the bed and took up a normal Beagle-sized amount of space and didn't bug us, that would be one thing. But that of course is not the case. He doesn't just sleep in the bed. He sleeps IN the bed. Under the covers. On our feet. Seriously. It kind of goes like this:

Dog jumps up on bed on to one of the sleeping humans. No preference here to which human; either one works.
Dog walks across now only semi-sleeping human using extremely poky feet.
Dog walks up to human's sleeping face, sniffs sleep breath, licks human face. Human grunts, pushes dog.
Dog starts plowing under the covers.
Human starts pushing dog away to keep him from going under covers.
Dog pushes his entire body weight against half asleep human. No contest here, really.
Dog weasels down to human feet, plunks entire body weight on them. Sighs loudly. Passes out.
Everyone sleeps for 20 minutes.
Dog wakes up hot.
Dog walks across human to get out from under covers. Emerges panting from heat.
Dog walks back across human to get to the exact same spot he was in just a moment ago except over covers rather than under. Plunks on human. Sighs loudly. Passes out.
Repeat ad nauseum.

As you can imagine, this has resulted in 5 years of crappy sleep. We've tried to prevent it, but until you have met this dog, you will not understand the level of stubbornness, the amount of attitude he brings to bear in these sorts of situations. And when you're mostly asleep, it's often just easier to let him do whatever he wants.

But we've had enough. When we returned from vacation we resolved: this is it. The dog is out of the bed.

He's not taking it well.

The first night, he was trying to get on the bed every few minutes. I had to sleep with a spray bottle of water in my hand, so that when he jumped up I could defend the sanctity of the bed with anti-terrorist weapons. This is war, people.

He didn't know what to do. He roamed around the bedroom, panting loudly, peeking up on the edges of the bed, generally having his snout out of joint. Despite the fact that there were two perfectly comfortable dog beds on the floor as well as a chair, none of that mattered. He wanted the bed. I'd threaten him with the Water Bottle of Good Behaviour and he'd go plunk on a dog bed for a few minutes, almost fall asleep, then realize that he was not getting the bed he was Entitled To and the whole cycle would start again. I actually got less sleep that night than I would have had he just been walking on my head as usual.

The next night, he got huffy. We told him to go to HIS bed, and he basically said "screw you" in dog language and left the room entirely to sleep on the couch, surely hoping we'd see the errors of our ways and come and beg him to walk his muddy feet all over our white sheets while we're sleeping. Obviously this backfired as it left me with a glorious dog-free bedroom. But then he came back upstairs, tried once to get in the bed, then gave up. The Beagle bed infestation appears to be over.

But oh, the poor dog. His spirit is crushed. He looks at me with those little eyes, wondering if I love him anymore. And when I woke up at 2 and couldn't sleep and came downstairs and laid on the couch with the remote and laptop, and he came downstairs to see me and cuddled right up against me, I couldn't help but lift up my blanket and let him plunk on my legs.

Sometimes, happiness is just a warm Beagle.

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Awake (or: Dealing with Beagle Guilt).