Outside the Box
Chuck has slept in a locked crate since the second night of his life in our family. Crate training was something we had read and heard about, and after a single night of having him sleep on a blanket next to the bed, a night of living hell wherein we'd wake repeatedly to the sound of him pooping and having a joyful wee in various corners of the bedroom, we knew that there was no other way to go about training our little beast, aside from perhaps incessant freakish screaming in a Southern accent which has worked gloriously on occasion.
We call his crate The Box, and for the last 300 nights or so he has slept in The Box, albeit frequently unwillingly. Sometimes when it's time to go into The Box he'll pout or hide behind behind my legs, his nose and ears peeking through the space between my knees. But Jon and I are both confident that The Box is the best thing that has ever happened to our dog, so much so that we're always quick to tell parents of a screaming toddler or whiny baby, stick the damn thing in a box!
But recently I've been bugging Jon to let Chuck sleep outside of The Box if only because he seems mature enough to handle the responsibility. I mean, Chuck is almost a year old, and he already knows his multiplication tables. How hard could it be for him to sleep in the little fleece puppy bed in the corner of the room? Not hard, I know, but you underestimate the tenacity and overall bull-headedness of the one I call Husband. He'll say, "No way," and "Nuh-huh," and "Blah blah, we need to be united on this, blah blah," something a conscientious yet wholly stubborn parent would say, whatever. He totally doesn't understand, and I'm totally rolling my eyes when I say that.
So a few nights ago in the middle of the night I heard a terrible sound coming from The Box. It's a sound so distinct and bone-chilling that you know what it is before the end of the first bellowing syllable. And that sound was the centipede-like contortion of Chuck's abdomen as he regurgitated half of his dinner, moving from his hind-quarters up through his belly, wriggling up his puppy esophagus and out of his snout in a gigantic burst of moaning, gritty bile.
So I quickly cleaned it up and somehow convinced a sleepy unsuspecting Husband to let Chuck sleep outside of The Box for the rest of the night. And let me tell you, I was almost so excited I couldn't get back to sleep. It was like the first slumber party with my dog ever!
Except he didn't sleep in the little fleece puppy bed in the corner of the room. And he didn't sleep on a blanket beside the bed. No, my 45 pound SuperMut slept in the bed on top of my body. Sometimes he was on my legs, other times he was stretched out prostrate across my torso. For the majority of the night he stole the covers and occupied my entire half of the bed, twitching and snoring like a bloated Fred Flintstone in a wife beater. I'm certain he had a dream wherein he chased a rabbit through the woods, finally catching it and ripping off its bloody head with the swift jerk of his entire spasmodic body. I woke in the morning with his tail up my nose.
I think it's safe to say that I will never again question Husband's judgment. That SuperMut motherfucker is going back in The Box.
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FM Living
Bast Herself said:
Now you've gone and done it. Oh boy. Better hope he gets used to the box again. Good luck with that.
02.11.03 - 12:31 PM / 1Craig said:
Dog's are the most inconsiderate bed sharer's on earth. My black lab does all these weird contortions including a strange position where she rolls over and puts all four paws in the air. In the process of rolling into this position, she is able to steal almost all the covers. Keep the box.
02.11.03 - 12:32 PM / 2dclay said:
I just finished the 2nd of two dog sitting stints. 21 days of dog sitting: 19 in the cage, 2 out. The only times the dogs puked, pissed, or shit in the house they were sleeping in my bedroom, outside the cage... Viva la box!
02.11.03 - 12:33 PM / 3Paul Gutman said:
I can barely sleep in my bed with someone else (and as I recall, neither do you, Miss Heat), but I can't imagine a potentially-vomitous canine there as well. I wouldn't sleep at all.
02.11.03 - 12:34 PM / 4shauna said:
well i'm disappointed by the first/last doggie sleepover. no pillow fights? no braiding each others hair?
i can't believe he's almost a year old, time flies :)
my dumb hound harry used to like to sleep in the bed too. except he'd burrow his way down under the covers until he was at the very end of the bed. i don't know how he breathed beneath three blankets and a quilt, so i'd ask "are you okay down there?" now and then... i'd hear a muffled 'thump thump' of a wagging tail on the bed :)
02.11.03 - 12:35 PM / 5dooce said:
shauna: that is the cutest thing i've ever heard.
02.11.03 - 12:38 PM / 6ryan said:
You'd better hope Chuck doesn't take this episode to mean that throwing up in 'The Box' wins him the bonus prize (sleeping in the bed with mom) o_O
02.11.03 - 12:40 PM / 7Chris said:
I wish mine would do the box. Oddly enough, she has been bed-trained basically forever, but in the last week, she's developed a strange fear of the bed.
She'll play on the bed during the day, but come bedtime, she freaks out, and sits by my bedroom door, eventually retiring to sleep in the bathroom.
Some mornings, I'll wake up, and she'll be back in the bed, other mornings, she'll be sleeping peacefully in the bathroom.
Really weird. Maybe she sees dead people?
02.11.03 - 12:41 PM / 8Filter said:
Chris: Maybe she is waiting for you to sleep so she can drink the coveted toilet water without you knowing.
02.11.03 - 12:45 PM / 9Greg said:
He slept on top of you? He must have been dog tired.
02.11.03 - 12:59 PM / 10windowsill wendy said:
my 50+ pound basset hound loves to sleep in the bed too. only she has to sleep on top of me. when fully stretched out, she's almost as big as i am.
she also serves as an excellent alarm clock - preferring the lick-mommy's-face-until-she-wakes-up method.
we tried teaching her to sleep on the floor, but then she'd look at us like this:
http://pages.sbcglobal.net/neil.fontenot/
blog/Aroooo!.JPG
02.11.03 - 01:02 PM / 11peggy said:
We started Cody in the box, but gave in like big wimps. Now he sleeps between us, groaning like an old man when one of us shifts. He farts, too. We made this bed, so now we have to lie in it (holding our noses).
02.11.03 - 01:02 PM / 12tourette's boy said:
fuck, dooce. that fukkin mutt motherfukker. damn cute, pic, though. fukk.
02.11.03 - 01:04 PM / 13Beerzie Boy said:
He'll be ruint ferever if ya let him sleep with ya. Stik to sleepin with yer cuzzins.
02.11.03 - 01:15 PM / 14Xanthan said:
So, up until half way through this thing I was thinking, "Dooce, don't be a fool - listen to the Husband. He's right on this one..." - particularly when you started rolling your eyes! Of course, I was rewarded for my patience with another lovely Dooce-ism: "snoring like a bloated Fred Flinstone"
This experience will serve you well, when your own Blurbodoociens do the same thing (I'm not going to touch whether or not you should crate train your kids!). When the wife was sick a couple of weeks ago, I slept in the guest bedroom only to be joined at 2AM in the morning by our eldest, age five. He'd had a bad dream and wanted to sleep with me. No problem... how could I refuse such a request from my adorable son? At 3AM, I woke up on my tummy with him laying prostate across my back. At 4:30AM, I was on my side with him curled up on top of me like a cat on a ledge. At 5:30AM, my son was chasing rabbits in his sleep...
Until that night, I really missed our fourteen year old Russian Wolfhounds who passed away last year. At least my son doesn't shed fur (or poop in the backyard.... anymore).
02.11.03 - 01:23 PM / 15zchamu said:
Our 5 month old beagle still sleeps in the box too. Except last night, when he woke up every 20 motherfucking minutes to whine. Thinking he had to pee, I'd open the door of the crate and invite him out. But the little bastard didn't have to pee. He just wanted the door open. So I crawl back into bed. I'm just about falling asleep when I hear him roaming around the room just LOOKING for things to crap on.
Bastard.
02.11.03 - 01:28 PM / 16JC said:
you must be strong. he'll try the puking/whining/whatever shtick until he's confident it will never again work. my roommate was not strong, and we eventually had to kick him and his untrained dog out of our house.
02.11.03 - 01:34 PM / 17Lynnette said:
But what about a compromise?! Let the poor guy sleep on his doggie bed. My pooch is almost 1 year old, too, and he sleeps quite peacefully on his bed NEXT to our bed. Works like a charm.
02.11.03 - 01:47 PM / 18antisocial diva said:
all my pets sleep with us. imagine two people (one in her fatter days), two beagles, and two cats on a queen. but there really isn't anything like that. i adore sharing my bed with them, and not in a michael jackson kind of way.
02.11.03 - 01:50 PM / 19sourbob said:
My wife and I used to have an 85 pound grayhound who we didn't have the sense to crate train and so he slept in the bed with us as often as he could manage. It was a nightmare of bony limbs, bad breath, and pinning down the covers.
The dog was a total pain in the ass, too.
02.11.03 - 01:52 PM / 20Rex said:
We call our crate the box too, but we've been slowly working our 11 month old dog out of the box - it was hard the first few nights, because he barked at anybody who walked by our house, but now he sleeps on his bed through the night. The best thing about a box-less dog is that he doesn't whine in the morning to get out of the box. He keeps his cool at least an hour longer than he used to before demanding some thumbs to open the door.
The dog walker even leaves him out of his box after his walk until we come home from work. I hope you can trust your dog soon, too.
02.11.03 - 01:53 PM / 21Garth Milo said:
Hi this is Garth Milo, I am three year old Black Lab. I love to sleep with mom and dad. I steal the covers, lay on top of them. I am 90 pounds but hey they love me. Riding in moms lap in the explorer is getting out hand though. Woof.
02.11.03 - 01:55 PM / 22Alex said:
Beware of the Vomit. Fear the Vomit. Critters will use the Vomit to their advantage.
Just the other day, the little idiots were meowing for another can of wet food, even though there was perfectly good bowl of dry there. But the husband wasn't giving in.
So what did they do? They set up a Vomit booby trap just for shits and giggles.
Just as Chris was walking from the living room to the kitchen *BAM* slipped on little idiot vomit, banged up his knee and had it all over his hands....
The vomit is evil and the little idiots will chuckle!
02.11.03 - 02:03 PM / 23Thug said:
Try 2 rottweilers and a cat. We never need heat in the bedroom. Our dogs start out in the crate, and graduate to the floor about a year old, generally. When Mack nearly died a few years ago after emergency surgery, I started letting them sleep on the bed - my wife was out of town for a month anyway, so I didn't give a shit if they took a lot of room. I work out of town all week now, and Mack travels with me. Sasha (who is actually a rott - pit mix, looks like a pit with rott colors only twice the size) and the evil feline stay home. Sasha also goes out and protects her cat from the other neighborhood cats. Mack wants to just play with them, and they all hate that. Rotts all have bad gas and snore like old drunks, too.
02.11.03 - 02:18 PM / 24jimmypage said:
the fucker that posted the idiotic garth milo shit should be executed.
at the very least, he or she should take a trip to iraq for human shield-duty.
02.11.03 - 02:18 PM / 25lee said:
But he's so cute when he sleeps out of the box. In pictures, anyway.
02.11.03 - 02:24 PM / 26p said:
"joyful wee." I am going to remember that for a long time.
Give Chuck another shot. I think you can learn to love having him cuddle with you. And if he's anything like my dog, he'll be the one who eventually tires of fighting you for space and moves to his doggy bed.
02.11.03 - 02:26 PM / 27Sheila said:
Bad dog, Garth, bad dog.
02.11.03 - 02:32 PM / 28rosebaby said:
i know i know! the first three nights were the box. now, it's the bed. along with 3 cats. Buck decided to barf on the bed at 4am the other night. i didn't have the heart to box him, although he does the box pretty well in general. he's a good bed sleeper as a pup. and he's too chicken to jump down off the bed. that's when the box comes back...
02.11.03 - 02:37 PM / 29LA Resident said:
I love how your dog stories get so many good comments.
Our dogs are 11 years old now, and early on we put a little effort into teaching them to ask before getting on the bed. We also taught them to get down when the fingers are snapped. This is a really wonderful thing. You can cuddle with lovable canines for a little while, and when things get out of hand you just snap your fingers and they head off to their own beds. Magic! We now only use the crate when we travel, and only because they are much less stressed when they know their space. But I do like that crate.
02.11.03 - 02:53 PM / 30