My wife took our youngest daughter back to school in Victoria this weekend, leaving Angus and I to batch it for a few days.
Angus is our two year old Welsh Terrier.
He seemed to me to be acting a bit bummed out all weekend. He wasn’t his usual overly rambunctious self, probably because I didn’t have a lot of time to spend chasing him around the yard. He was having a hard time entertaining himself, and when he did, he usually got himself into trouble.
So if I didn’t have the time to watch him, I left him tied up, which probably contributed to his bummed out attitude.
We have a cat, too, but I’m not including her in our bachelor weekend, because she’s so aloof and independent I barely notice she’s around.
Angus, however, is another story. I readjusted the weekend schedule to make sure he wasn’t cooped up in his kennel all the time. I also felt sorry for him for the time he was spending on leash, so I let him bunk with me for a few days.
Angus isn’t a big dog - 30 pounds, max - but he turned out to be a terrible bed hog.
When he first realized he was bunking with me, he promptly climbed up onto my pillow on my side of the bed, and looked at me as though to say, “Well, this is comfortable. Where are you going to sleep?”
I gently shoved him towards the other side of the bed. That apparenttly didn’t suit him all that well, and he promptly began ripping the covers off the bed, as though he had to find a more comfortable layer.
I chastised him and got him to settle down on his side of the bed. I settled down to read for a while, and when I got up to turn off the light, he got up and resettled on my pillow again.
Boy, give some people, uh, dogs, an inch and they will take a mile.
I pushed him back to his side once more.
I woke up sometime during the night to find his butt pushing against my body. I must have reacted to his relocation while asleep, because now I was only a few inches from the edge of the bed. For a little guy, he was exerting a lot of force on my body.
I rolled over and gently eased him back to the other side of the bed. I must have been sleeping that way for some time; I felt stiff and sore from sleeping in one position.
We both fell asleep again, until he woke me up with some quiet yips and light hearted barks. He was dreaming.
Maybe the cat was chasing him in his dreams. By this time I wasn’t feeling too sorry for him.
Later that night, I dreamed I was falling over a precipice, only to waken, stiff and sore again. Angus had wedged himself against my midsection once more, and had pushed me to the very edge of the bed, this time with absolutely no room to spare.
“How much bed does a little guy like you need, anyway?” I asked him. As I moved him back to his side of the bed, he yawned, stretched, got up and moved as far away from me as he could get.
Good. It looked like he was starting to get the message.
But, it turned out, apparently not. When I awoke in the morning, I could barely get out of bed. I had spent the rest of the night in one position once again. This time, Angus had moved up on his side of the bed to a location just below the pillow, where he stretched out sideways, his back and front legs completely extended. I was amazed at how long he could make himself, almost stretching across the whole width of the bed, and pushing me towards the edge once again. He looked totally content, happy, well rested and unperturbed.
I bet if I had left him, he’d still be sleeping.