Where Sleeping Dogs Lie

Ever since we moved to this house, I've been saying we need to get a dog bed. Of course, I want Mia and her old bones to have a comfortable place to rest in the house--where I suspect she will be spending the majority of her time when the really cold weather finally descends--but mostly I just want her out of the damn way.

The way our living room is laid out, there's a perfect race track all around the perimeter. The children of course take full advantage of this, and they spend a lot of time literally running in circles, sometimes to the soundtrack of Billy Idol*, sometimes pretending to be animals, sometimes just running around like morons because, well, because they're children.

And where does Mia choose to rest her enormous old bones? Yup, right smack in the middle of their track.

She's so big, she would literally span the entire width of the space between the end table and a chair. I can't count how many times the kids have fallen over her. Lucky for them, she never bites, even when startled, but it was obviously not an ideal situation for anyone.

So I finally remembered to ask A. to get her a bed. He did. We put it in a nice little out-of-the-way alcove of the living room. And of course . . .

Not who I was trying to get out of the way, actually, though it would be nice.

The children hopped right on and wrestled on it for awhile, but Mia? She tentatively walked around on it for a second when I called her over to it, but then gave me a canine, "NOPE," and settled back down in her usual inconvenient spot.

I moved it to a different spot next to the recliner, thinking maybe she wanted to feel still part of the action without actually being in the action.

Nope.

I moved it under the window next to the table we eat at, thinking the proximity to food might be enticing. 

Nope.

I sat on it with her. I sat in a chair next to it and petted her while she stood on it uneasily. I patted it to remind her occasionally that she had her very own bed.

Nope, nope, nope. For four days.

And then, today when the kids were doing their NASCAR impression and she was tripped over for the fortieth time, she finally gave in.

.

Good dog, Mia.

* I still love Billy, I do, but the daily (sometimes multiple times daily) repeat of this one CD is starting to wear on me. There are only so many times a person can listen to "Mony, Mony" with the background vocals of two screaming children before the nerves get a little stretched.