How many Dogs can Fit in a Bed ?

We have a Queen size bed and currently a sweet little dog that I call “Basil the Dog Detective” or Basil for short, is staying with us — for quite a while.

My partner whom I call MM for “Mere Male” has a mother who has gone caravanning with a friend for a few months, while Basil’s Aunt (me) and Uncle (MM) look after him!

Well, Basil is an aging Cairn Terrier and gone are the days of his younger Self when he used to go wild and chew everything up and turn into an awesome escape artist, running away from his first home and having to be found.

Today he is sweet and sedate and loves to wait for table scraps from his Aunt, and to go for walks, and he always knows when it’s 5 o’clock, his dinner time.

Like so many other cats and dogs, Basil a pretty small dog, has been allowed to sleep on the bed. 😢

The problem is that when you walk into the bedroom, the first side next to the door is my side and I am the smallest.

MM is like a whale beside me (even though he teases me by calling me “the baby hippopotamus”) and “That Dog” as I call the Dog Detective when he is being troublesome, likes to sleep solidly at the end of my feet.

The thing is that I have small delicate feet and sometimes a few kilograms of dog land on those feet, and I am not happy.

Basil will jump up onto my side, scrabbling around and over me and plonk himself partly on my feet, sometimes wholesale on my legs.

Of course, I will shout my protests and move him on or try to encourage him over to the side of me, and even if he does sidle over, often he ends up restricting the movement of my feet or impounding them by lying partly on them or next to them.

There’s a “tuck” effect, meaning the covers are tucked under a few kilos of dog and there’s no wiggle room for my poor feet.

So, this time around, the “gloves were off”. MM said that he could try training the Dog Detective to sleep in his own bed, and even shut him up in the laundry.

I doubted this would work, as our Laundry is so cold, and soon will be even colder with Winter weather that will be upon us here in Australia.

Like us, the Dog Detective wants to keep warm, so he’ll go for the bed as that’s what he’s been allowed to do.

He has a little jacket for the Winter weather and a lovely bed and warm blankets, but dogs and cats that are fatally allowed in the first place to be a bed companion, claim that right vociferously.

MM came up with an alternative, and a cunning plan at that.

He placed a large thick piece of board against the bed and that made a high barrier, which stopped the Dog Detective jumping up my side.

Of course, he just went around and jumped up from the back.

I ran around feverishly looking for inspiration and placed my “straw” hat in the corner where my toes were.

“That’ no good” MM told me, “he may ruin it.” So, I ran around some more, and finally came up with a fiendishly good solution, so I thought.

Besides the board barrier, I had a super long stiff umbrella across the end of the bed, where my toes are.

After the first night I found I had to make some adjustment to its exact placement, so I placed it diagonally to give me room for my legs on either side.

Apart from the crinkling of the stiff plastic that the brolly is encased in, as Basil moved around, it was great!

Well, MM soon got fed up with the crackling plastic, and one night, threw the offending brolly on the floor saying “This is a stupid idea.”

He got up and rummaged around in our wardrobes and found and placed a neck pillow at the bottom of the bed where my toes might be.

This is a small hard doughnut shaped pillow (with a slice out of the “doughnut”) designed to fit around the neck but never used for that purpose.

I also added my blue “straw” hat so it was at the end and the side of the bed, the pillow closest to the centre of the bed.

Amazingly, the pillow and the hat combination have worked (largely) to keep the dog at bay.

He sleeps in between us and avoids the hard raised pillow.

But if he forgets and manages to encroach upon my space because I have my legs curled up, I give a shout and MM will move him on, or Basil will relocate himself as he is pretty responsive to his Aunt shouting at him “Get off my legs.”

Altogether, Basil the Dog Detective is a good dog and a good companion to us, and takes us for walks.

“He knows where to go” MM advised me, the first time I took him to the park.

He did indeed, dragging me along, and leaving me huffing and puffing upon our return.

Human beings let him do what he wanted, in the first place. Some people may tsk or tut at an animal being on the bed, but we are his Aunt and Uncle and promised his human Mum to look after him. 😃 🐶

All it took is a bit of creative barrier-making and training or talking to Basil the Dog Detective, to get through to him that his Aunt doesn’t like him laying on her feet.

My feet can rest in peace now.

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About the Author

Celine Lai was born in Malaya (not Malaysia) and is the oldest inter-country adopted person in Australia. She loves reading and writing, and runs WordPress blogs and writes technical documents. She blogs mainly on Fascinating Animals.

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