On Lying Down with Dogs

The weather is cooling off, and that means that I lie down with dogs. Three dogs, in fact. Usually they are arrayed thus:

Flower takes up residence at the foot of the bed near the window, and barely moves. She knows where she can sleep and incur the least disruption from moving feet, moving dogs or incoming kid.

Kobi roots her way under the covers and descends all the way down, often curling up around knee level off to one side. This works fine unless G crawls into bed with me, in which case she sometimes gets squashed a bit.

Roxy find the absolutely most inconvenient and uncomfortable place for her to possibly lie down and then spends most of the night alternately scratching herself bald or chewing on her bone. Usually she lies down right where I want to put my legs. Sometimes, however, if I get up in the middle of the night, she moves to my pillow, where she sticks like a limpet until I either smack her butt or harry her off the bed, whereupon she immediately bounces right back up and reinstalls herself wherever I most want to put my feet.

Roxy really would like to sleep with Grayson, but she just can't bring herself to stay there after lights out. She can't stand it that I'm still up and moving around, so she always comes in to see what I'm up to. Getting Grayson to bed, however, is an exercise is outfoxing the Rox. We go into Grayson's room and Roxy leaps onto the bed and curls up on the covers. I snap my fingers and she jumps down. Then she jumps back up as G is getting under the covers and she lays on them so he can't pull them up. I snap and down she goes. Grayson pulls the covers up. Roxy leaps onto the bed, steps over him, leans down to investigate his face, and then plops down at his side.

I say good night and turn out the light.

If Roxy doesn't jump down right away to follow me out of the room, within minutes the scratching begins. Or the chewing. Or both. Soon I hear Grayson struggling to get Roxy off the bed. Finally, I will call her and she will assume her post at my feet. I choose this martyrdom rather than sacrifice Grayson's sleep.

Sometimes she lies very still and quiet and black on the floor of my bedroom in the dark, waiting for me to trip over her on my way to the bathroom in the wee hours of the morning. That's always fun. And sometimes she comes and prickles my face with her whiskers at 2 a.m. wanting to go outside herself.

Ah dogs.