She'd sleep downstairs, she announced a little too quickly, I felt. I am a stubborn man, but not a stupid one. If I wanted to spend any time with my wife, I was going to have to be flexible.
This is why we've moved all the furniture out of the TV room and replaced it with a futon mattress, which we've shoved to one side so the dog doesn't trip over anything during recovery.
I take the side of the bed closest to the wall and farthest from the dog. Harley gets his own bed, a small mattress placed within reach of my wife and covered with his favorite blanket.
Here I should mention that the dog is a 113-pound bouvier des Flandres, a breed known in its native Flemish as Vuilbaard for dirty beard.
A bouvier is not a delicate creature. Picture a black bear with a horse chest, Prussian whiskers, and the determination of Dick Cheney.
I love Harley, but I have easily resisted his charms at night. Apparently, this puts me in the minority. Nearly half the dog owners and 62 percent of cat owners told surveyors for the American Pet Products Association earlier this year that they let their animals into their beds. Two California vets reported about the same time that sleeping with pets was potentially more dangerous than having bedbugs, with risks running from cat-scratch disease to the bubonic plague.
My objection has more to do with the fact that Harley is an animal and I need my sleep. Plus, for the moment at least, he has to wear one of those plastic lamp shades - at the vet's they called it an Elizabethan collar. It's about the size of a satellite dish, and he knocks about in the dark with the grace of a rutting Triceratops.
We rescued Harley from the pound. He's 5 now and returned from a deep snow this winter favoring his back right leg.
