Two's Company

Jake has become a clingy dog since our older dog Dylan was put to sleep a couple of weeks ago. He doesn’t like to let us (particularly me) out of his sight. He barks when we leave the house. He doesn’t like to sleep alone.

We let him come upstairs on Friday night and spent a very restless night as he tried to settle in on our bed, on our floor, wherever he could. Every time he moved, I woke up. We were tired all day yesterday as a result.

Last night we banished him to the downstairs area of our house. But at precisely 5:45 he began to emit a very plaintiff bark of loneliness. I finally went down and opened the gate as he wagged his tail so hard I thought it might fly off.

He actually settled down fairly fast upstairs, but then there were three of us in the bed when we work up at 9:00 a.m. Feeling amorous, we said to each other, “What exactly do we do with the dog?”

We laughed at the fact that our stupid dachshund had slept with us every night of her life and probably never even realized what else we did in that bed besides sleep. But then my husband reminded me that she weighed all of 14 pounds, not the hulking 85-pound monster that is Jake.

The solution to this morning’s dilemma was to lure Jake back downstairs before luxuriating in each other’s company. A threesome which includes a dog just doesn’t work for either of us!