How to Create a Monster

Ingredients:

1 OCD (obsessive-compulsive dog)

1 blanket

1 dog bed

1 bad idea

Living in Sausalito, evenings are cool, whether it be summer or winter. Even when the heat waves occurred, you would  be back in your fleece by sundown. We slept with a big down comforter on our bed and blankets on top of that. Bella slept beside our bed on her pillow. Scott became increasingly concerned about Bella's level of warmth and, one day, decided that she needed a blanket (cue music of impending doom).

He thought if we were cold she must be cold also. I tried pointing out the fact that she had fur and we didn't but he was not to be swayed by petty logic. Scott started putting a blanket over her when she went to bed. Sometimes, if he deemed it "really cold" she got double blanketed. We had plenty of blankets because Scott seemed to receive a blanket from his family on every holiday. Some were even monogrammed, which was very thoughtful, but a bit odd when your monogram is also a communicable disease (SAR).

Bella took to the blanket idea like white on rice. Only problem was that she didn't sleep in one place all night. She would wake up, do her spin move, and the blanket would inevitably fall off. Being the smart girl that she is, she would just paw at the bed until her blanket was put back on. It could happen once a night or it could happen five times. If the pawing didn't work, she would add the whine. The paw/whine combo never failed her.

I decided there had to be an easier way so I designed her a cape. I took a fleece blanket, cut a neck hole in it, and voila, there was her sleep cape. I was pretty excited to try it out and was singing my own praises at what a brilliant solution I had come up with as we went to bed. During the night Bella woke up, spun, and went back to sleep. Sucess! Genius! Except the next time she woke up, she stepped on the back of the blanket, spun, and front leg came out of the neck hole, trapping her in her cape. This continued to happen and was somewhat traumatic each time we had to dislodge her. Her cape turned back into a regular blanket and with that my dreams of dog cape fame and fortune died.

That was probably 4 years ago and she still sleeps every night with her blanket on. When we picked her up from the kennel recently the owner said "I thought you were kidding about the blanket but I did it anyway and, sure enough, when I would come in in the morning, she would still have the blanket on." This, of course, proved that she can keep the blanket on in emergency situations and if she knows there is no one to put it back on her.

Scott keeps trying to talk me into trading sides of the bed so that I have blanket duty. Instead, as a coping mechanism, I have learned to sleep with a pillow over my head. Scott calls it my pillow hat and I like it very much. Maybe next time it falls off, I'll try the paw/whine combo to get Scott to put it back on. :-)

Bella walking around bumping into things after getting up in the morning.