Every dog that's adopted me has been a unique sleeper

Every dog that’s ever adopted me had its own unique sleep habits, some of them a bit strange.

Take for instance, when we first got the little dog Maggie, who sleeps with me every night in the bed. The first night with her, when bedtime came she jumped into the dirty laundry basket and was asleep before I got into bed myself. Later she still took naps in the laundry basket but she soon figured out sleeping in the bed with the humans was allowed.

One stretch when my late wife was in the nursing home for physical therapy, Maggie decided to crawl under the covers and sleep between my legs like she does when I’m in the recliner. I don’t move a lot and she would eventually get hot and crawl out from under the covers.

The dog who died last year was equally strange. He never showed any interest in sleeping in the bed, maybe because there was already a Dalmatian in the bed. So his favorite place to spend the night was underneath the bed. Keep in mind this dog was about 60 pounds at this time and by wriggling on his belly he could somehow get underneath there. A short time after dining in our household he would no longer fit and took up residence on the couch in the living room.

Back to the Dalmatian, named Flint. Not only did this 50-pounder sleep in the bed, he slept under the covers between us, often with legs extended. Luckily I got the soft part of the dog and the wife got the sharp claws. This dog was cold-natured and often didn’t even come out from under the covers when the humans got up.

One other dog’s sleeping habits of note was my Brittany Spaniel, Lashes. I was a teen, still living at home, and the dog wasn’t allowed on the carpet and knew it. My dad’s recliner was within jumping distance of the tile dining room floor and we taught her (she was a quick learner) to make the jump. That’s where she would hang out in the lap of whoever was sitting in the chair or if no one was in the chair, just nap there.

When we let her in the back door it got to the point where she headed straight for the chair. One night we made the mistake of letting her in after Dad had already occupied the chair with his paper up blocking his view as she launched through the paper into his lap.

At night I would sneak her into my room and let her sleep on my bed. She was a happy puppy on my bed.

Finally there was Nipper, a female mixture of Labrador and Springer Spaniel. She started the night on the foot of the bed but often wound up in the living room. She often asked to be let outside before daylight. Later we found she would then go over to the neighbor’s fence and through their doggie door, where she stayed until they got up and fixed her breakfast.

Nipper also liked to sleep on her back and as she got older she became a little deaf but mostly when she fell asleep like that she just zoned out. One day the electric meter reader knocked on our door to report that it appeared our dog was dead. I whistled at her and she quickly rolled over and looked at him with her typical bloodshot eyes.

“Oh, I guess that dog is alive, I’m so glad.”

Karl Terry writes for Clovis Media Inc. Contact him at:

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