Many, many, years ago, back when I was young, so let’s say 22 years ago or so, I had a boyfriend who would let his extremely shaggy dogs sleep in bed with him. This caused me much distress.
The fact that he never cleaned anything ever, AND let his dogs sleep with him was probably most of the problem. Why I took my “cleanly wrath” out on the dogs back then, I’ll never understand. I mean, you can’t really blame a dog for blankets that never made the trek to the laundry room. Sleeping with him was flat out disgusting. Honestly, I think that’s where I developed my dog allergy (my mom will tell you that’s a lie…but I’m going to stand by this because I don’t remember being allergic to dogs as a child…anyway).
When I was a child, our dogs were always outside dogs. The Labs and Beagles that we had would run amuck all over the farm, and we would just ramble along beside them. However, when we went inside, they stayed outside. Mom had enough to clean with three muddy kids running in and out all of the time, she didn’t need extra help making things dirty.
When I was able to start housekeeping on my own, I was thrilled to have inside pets. As soon as I could, I adopted a dog (a hairy one!) and a cat. I also cleaned all of the time, and had no problems keeping up after the animals. BUT I had one rule: no pets in the bed. The ex-boyfriend had ruined me for sleeping with animals. I wanted blankets that were free of pet hair!
I abided by this rule strictly for my entire life, until recently. Honestly, it’s been a great run. I am very allergic to pretty much everything on the planet, but most especially animals. I don’t care though because I love animals, so it’s worth taking all the medicine and cleaning all the time. I mean, after teaching at the college all day, I need to come home to a snuggly pet who is No. 1 going to be happy to see me and No. 2 isn’t going to make up an excuse about why they didn’t get their paper done.
When we brought Mae, our Red Lab, home last November I was insistent that we crate train her. It was a rough three days, but we did it and are thankful that we did. She puts herself to bed every night at 9, and has a safe space to be if we leave the house.
Then in March little Miss June came into our lives. We hadn’t planned on adopting another pet, but she needed a home, and goodness was she cute. She’s a golden retriever and possibly English pointer mix (only guessing because she looks just like one and points like she’s been trained to). Pure black, so much so that you can’t see her in the dark, she came to our house at five weeks old as the runt of the litter. Teeny, tiny, and shivering, Junie B Jones (as we call her) quickly became spoiled rotten.
She’s also a Mama’s girl…
More than likely because we brought her home during the Quarantine, training her has gone much faster than it did Mae. She house-trained in two weeks and started pointing birds all on her own, much to our surprise. She’s whip smart, and loves her people (actually I think she may think she’s a person).
And then there’s this one other thing about her.
She’s sleeping in our bed.
Gosh. I know. I can’t believe it either. I caved. We tried the crate the first night, and she cried louder than any creature I’ve ever heard cry (and I’ve raised children and taught college students). After two hours of continuous crying, I put her in bed with Joe and I. She curled up on my robe, which is always at the end of the bed just in case the kids need me in the middle of the night, and went right to sleep.
She has slept there ever since.
It wouldn’t be so bad if she didn’t snore. I have never heard such a small animal make such loud noises. She snores so deafeningly that our son James can hear her from the room away. We have to turn the fan on just to drown her out. Sometimes we nudge her or shake her away, “June, you’re snoring. Shut up.”
I mean, I’m fairly certain she’s never had her nose broken so it’s just wild that she snores so intensely. Sometimes we try to put her in bed with Violet, and it lasts for about two minutes. Joe and I will get settled and tucked in, and then we hear June crying outside our door. I pop up, and she runs in, jumps on our bed, and settles in. UGH.
I just don’t know what happened to me. How have I fallen this far? How did I transition from the, “I will NEVER let a dog sleep with me,” to “Well, just for one night” and now she’s with us for eternity?
One thing I do know is that I have to take double the allergy medicine that I was taking before, even though she doesn’t shed at all (which I guess is common of pointers). Also, June stinks. HOLY COW. She’s super clean, but she smells like skunk. I’ve tried all the tricks, even a baking soda dry bath…which made it look like she had a terrible drug problem (*Wyatt called her Scarface for like a whole day).
Here I am complaining about her, and do you know what she’s doing? Lying beside me with her head in my lap. She is the most devoted of dogs that I’ve ever had. In some ways, she’s been a major blessing to me during “these uncertain times” and I have to say that I’m grateful for her.
So, I guess that since these times are changing so intensely, I guess I can bend a bit too. It’s not so bad to have a dog sleep in our bed every night. Especially if you know where the laundry room is, shout out to my ex-boyfriend.