It's Been a Hard Day's Night....

And I've been sleeping like a dog. Which isn't much of a stretch since Cleo is spoiled rotten and sleeps in our bed. I don't know if I would actually call it sleeping what she does. It's much more like hogging. It's an amazing feat almost like a magic trick how a 54 pound dog can elongate and contort itself to take up an entire king size bed. I have no idea what we will do when we get our puppy in a few months. At least having the puppy sleep in a crate for the first 9 months will buy us sometime.

Cleo claiming her spot in our bed

Every night we place Cleo in between us at the bottom of the bed. She has her own blankie to burrow under. We turn off the light, close our eyes, she starts to snore and somehow in the middle of the night the dog sleep walking begins. She manages to roll on her back and hold the blanket up like she pitched a tent with her extended paws. Which scared the hell out of me the first time I woke up and saw this big outline of something in the darkness.

An early paws in the air by Cleo as a puppy

Cleo with a more developed paws in the air technique

Then she creeps up army crawl style between us until I wake up with paws jammed in my back and a snoring snout in my ear. When I drag her back to the bottom of the bed where she belongs she lays across Jim's legs before somehow managing to make it back to my pillow. Eventually around 4am she gets off the bed on my side, runs to Jim's side and noses her way under the covers were she stays till he gets up at 6:30.

Puppy Cleo crashed out when we were gutting our house

Jim blames me for her need to be under the blankets because when she was a puppy I would wrap her in a blanket and call her the puppy taco or puppy burrito.  But in my defense I never wanted the dog in the bed in the first place! He's the one who broke the no dog in the bed rule I set. Which I busted him for when I came home from work on my lunch break one day when she was 5 months old and I found him arm in arm napping with her.

Me breaking my own rules (For the record I am the biggest offender)

Jim with Cleo and Bailey

When she was a puppy she would get us up everyday like clock work at 5:30am. She ran like a banshee all day and would crash out in puppy coma at 8pm every night. Since she turned 2 she has turned into a lazy bum. She will lay snuggled under the covers wrapped in my arms with her fuzzy face on my pillow till 10:30am on Saturday mornings. I love it. When I get up for work during the week it's nearly impossible to get her out of bed. I'll stand in the kitchen why I make my breakfast or lunch and yell to her in the back bedroom to get her lazy bones up. Even goading her with a truck ride won't pull her from the warmth of our blankies. Most days we have to rub her belly and then physically drag her out of bed to get her going. I have a feeling the puppy will remedy all of this laying about.