Sleeping with a Bed Cover Hog!

[Laurie, Fudge, and Vern]

With the outside temperatures rising, it is rare now to find one of the dogs in our bed.  The other night was an exception.  Fudge slept the entire night with us and it reminded me again what I do not miss when she joins us in bed.  Fudge is a cover hog.  Most every night, Fudge waits for Hayley to come home from work and put her up on the bed with me.  Yes, you read that correctly.  Fudge can leap tall buildings, jump into trucks, jump on and off our stone wall with ease, catapult from our boat, and bounce around trying to escape Vern, but she refuses to jump onto our bed.  Instead, she will place her two front paws on the bed and look around like she is thinking, “a little help, please.” She likes to wait until I am all settled in bed, doing a million things, or in the bathroom, and along she comes expecting her royal behind to be lifted the rest of the way into bed.  I have tried to out wait her or hide in the closet so I am standing there when she comes around the corner and I don’t have to be interrupted by her timing, but somehow she knows what is going on and always waits until I am in bed before arriving.

 

I know I have a number of conspiracy theories, but I honestly think she does it this way because when I get out of bed, I throw my sheet and covers back and she knows if she gets to that area before I get back into bed, she’s got herself the most comfortable, padded area on the bed.  Now, before you say I sound insane, I would like to add that I spent 20 minutes on the phone the other day with my mother who has convinced herself that the cook at her place purposely gives her the smallest food portions of anyone at her table.  When you put into perspective the fact that she was totally worked up about the size of her stuffed green pepper and was absolutely convinced her pepper was some sort of freak of nature and the cook had it out for her, either you would conclude that my theory about Fudge no longer sounds crazy or that I come by my paranoia naturally.   Each time my mom tells me the green pepper story; the pepper shrinks and is now about the size of a walnut. Oh, and if you dare to make a joke and say something like, “well, you did say you wanted to lose weight, “ or tell her to yell, “is that Lawrence Welk over there?” and quickly switch peppers with a table mate when everyone turns to look, she might tell you to stuff your own pepper.

 

So, conspiracy theory aside, all I know is, for the rest of the night, my covers are half under Fudge and no matter how I push and pull, I can’t get them right again.  Usually, the covers only pull up as far as my stomach or only cover one side of me and the other side is left exposed to the elements.  The only benefit I can see to this method of sleeping is if a burglar came into our room in the middle of the night and happened upon my exposed backside might scream and alert us to his presence or silently say to himself, “I need to find another line of work. This job is killing me,” and run out of the house.  It is also the reason you will never find mirrors over our bed, because neither of us wants to look up and in the words of Haley Joel Osment say, “I see broad people!” Hey, it’s not easy finding words that rhyme with dead and mean plumpish.  It was either broad or spread.  Anyways, you get the point, and can see why we prefer our covers to be covering and not resting under Fudge comfortably.

 

In addition to Fudge, if I didn’t know better, I would think John grew up on a little house on the prairie, slept in a loft with his five siblings, shared one thin, tattered blanket between them, and spent nights fighting for his share of that blanket. Some nights, when he pulls the covers to him, I am instantly uncovered and in the morning, I will find the covers that are not covering him lying on the floor on his side of the bed.   The other night when he pulled, I told him to turn over and look what he had done and he said he would rather not and could I just describe what I was seeing.  So, I said, “you are in bed with a partially uncovered woman who needs your immediate attention,” and he said, “Can I phone a friend?”

 

The saddest thing of all and the part that keeps my mom and kids telling all their friends that I am nuts about my dogs is I know I could push Fudge hard enough to move her or yank the covers out from under her, but I don’t want to disturb her and have her up and leave the bed.  So I suffer, just not always in silence. If my mom only knew that some nights Fudge stands up in the middle of the night, right at the edge of the bed, and waits until I get up and say, “GO, FUDGE!” before she jumps down, she would tell me I have a screw loose.   It all goes back to my theory that in another life Fudge was royalty and was used to her comings and goings being announced.  Hear ye, hear ye, all rise please; Fudge will be leaving the bed!  I can only believe that I was her lady-in-waiting or the town crier.

 

Maybe I have never gotten over that mother mindset that our kid’s needs come before our own and this carried through to my dogs.  Just don’t ask my kids because they will tell you they never slept with us and I was adamant that after a short amount of time reassuring them that they were fine, they go back to their own beds.  Hayley will also tell you that just the other day I said to her at a wedding shower, “Fudge, let’s go stand over there.”  After that, she told anyone that would listen that she ranks below my dogs, until I finally said, “Zip it, whoever you are, or Fudge and Vern are going to bump you right out of your bedroom.” I also was not big on assisting them when I thought they could do it themselves and while I think it was character building, they will tell you it bordered on child abuse.  Swinging is a good example…I would only push for a specified amount of time and then I assured them if they would just pump their little legs they could make it happen without involving mom.  Once, when Megan asked for more pushing, I said, “what do I look like? One of the Great Wallendas?” and she answered back, “I don’t know who they are, but if they are mean to kids, then YES.”  Fudge and Vern have not asked yet for help on swings, but I wonder what my response would be to them.  Something tells me, my kids and mom don’t want to know that answer.

[Bonnie and Kona]

Love the blog, Laurie. You have captured my mindset with Kona. I feel like he has graced us with his presence when he comes up on the bed and will do nothing to deter him. If that means I have exactly the area of one pillow on which to curl up, then so be it. I will not ask him to move for fear he will jump off all together. What is that? Insane, I guess. We put an ottoman in our room so he can easily get onto and off our bed with ease. He does the two feet up on Jennie's bed and I have to assist the 95 pound hiney up there. He doesn't wiggle around to try to sleep on the pillows so I think he is a pretty good boy. Owen isn't allowed on my bed. When he gets on Jennie's he uses it as his full body rub down... smearing every inch of himself from one end of the bed to the other. I don't know if he is wiping himself off or wiping her scent on. Either way it is quite a scene. 

[Lonnie & Libby Lu]

Love this Laurie and I think we can all pretty much relate to your "bedtime stories"!  Fudge is pretty smart when it comes to the covers and getting up on the bed.  Why not have a "lady in waiting" to help her?  Libby "owns" our bed and never do we leave our bed without her "leaping" to the empty pillow!  

[Janie, Jackson and Jilly]

Fudge is one smart girl and I had to smile at you having to say"GO, FUDGE" so she'll jump down off the bed! I am usually curled up in a ball so they have plenty of room, but just like you I'd rather that than they jump off!

[Nancy, Ned, Clancy, and Charlie]

You mean everybody doesn't sleep curled in the fetal position so the dog can hog occupy the bottom half of the half?

[F, Calla & Luca]

Oh, I needed a good chuckle after packing. But I have gotten my dogs to understand "Move Over". If they leave the bed so be it since when I turn the light out Luca will almost always jump back on the bed. Just remember, you are the pack leader : )

[Camilla and Darwin]

Ha ha ha, this cracks me up! Fudge definitely knows how to wrap people around her paws doesn't she! I seem to remember her jumping up onto my bed by herself a few times when I was visiting ... she is such a smart little princess. :-)

I can be pretty uptight about my covers each have our own blankets because I can't tolerate the blanket hogging, LOL.

[Lori, Quincy & Frankie]

Oh Fudge- you have your Momma's number, for sure....Quincy waits for one of us to get up to the bathroom, and he then leaps onto the empty pillow and puts on his innocent face.  Never fails! 

[Cheryl and Finnegan]

LOL I love this one, Laurie!  It makes me wonder how many of us are up in the middle of the night because our doodle has 3/4 of the bed and all the covers :)  I never want to wake Finn up because if undisturbed he will sleep peacefully all night but if I wake him up, he'll want to go out and won't go back to sleep until he does.  Who's trained who?? LOL Tell your mom I definitely think she's part of a green pepper conspiracy and she needs to start a petition for Green Pepper Fairness :))   

[Christine & Shelby]

Love this blog Laurie as I just love all your blogs. Shelby is not a cover hog, but she will take up 3/4 of a queen sized bed and she only weighs 40 pounds... But I will happily squish over to give her room as I don't want to disturb her. I totally get it. Love my doodle girl!!!

[Lucy & AnnaBelle's Mom]

Love this blog.  Little AnnaBelle has always done the same thing to get up on the bed.  I've always thought that it was because Honey was here when AnnaBelle came to us and she always saw us lifting Honey's rear end up on things.  But it is so cute the way she just runs up, puts her front paws and and then looks around like "Could someone get my butt please".