Last night, half way through, my girl jumped up on the bed and licked my ear - and I spoiled her by not choking the crap out of her.
OK, not really. She is a very good girl and if she actually had to wake me up she probably had held it as long as she could and really had to go. I’d rather she woke me than go inside or injure herself.
That doesn’t mean that I wasn’t *contemplating *choking the crap out of her…
My Border Collie has been my bud for over a decade now. Due to his age and continence issues, he’s having to become an “outside” dog. In order to help him acclimate to the outdoors, I built him a doghouse that resides on our covered deck. The doghouse has R-13 insulation sandwiched between layers of 5/8’s plywood for the floor, and rigid foam insulation on all walls; a carpeted floor, an inner and outer area for him to sleep depending on weather (the inner area is reached via a “hall” and a 180 degree turn). Thermostat-controlled underfloor heating in the inner portion, and a removable roof so I can clean and vacuum his home regularly. I don’t think he sees as well as he used to, so I’m evaluating some low-voltage lighting in certain places on the deck and yard as well.
My wife is still rolling her eyes.
I’m also installing wiring for a small fan and maybe A/C for next summer. Wife hasn’t noticed this yet.
It sounds like you’ve put a lot of time & effort into the doghouse, but have you talked to the vet about your dog’s issues? There is a pill for dogs that are having incontinence problems.
My animals are all spoiled. I have cat beds on my computer desk. They get the best food money can buy. I walk my dog for at least 45 minutes before work and he gets to go to the dog park most evenings. I bring him to a playgroup on weekends. I’m bringing my dog to the ren fest today. He goes with us most places he is allowed to go (he is very socialized). We always share food (that they can have, healthy stuff) with them - always.
I got a dog for my dog. Nordberg was rescued from a shelter for abused Beagles. She had been there for a while. they fixed her leg which had been broken and her neck was raw with a red belt of open fresh that had been rubbed off by a chain wrapped tightly around it. When we went to see her, she was in a cage and showed little interest in people. She barely wagged her tail when I came into the cage. When I brought Quincy, my other Beagle she went out of her mind. She groveled in front of him, licked his face over and over and laid on her back in front of him. So we took her home.
She is the sweetest dog i ever saw. I do not know how you could get her to bite you. You can take a bone from her and she will wag her tail.
But then Quincy died. Life was no longer fun for her. Her tail went straight down her butt and did not move. When I walked her in the park, the people who knew her were upset by how pathetic she was.
So I had to rescue another Beagle. This one is an idiot but Nord is happy. She has recovered and life is fun again.
I will contort my body in all kinds of wacky ways to allow Butch room to sleep on the bed or couch with me.
Joe
I forgot something…we always have at least one emergency cat toy. We keep it hanging on a nail on a kitchen wall, just in case one of the cats (probably Chaos) destroys the last cat toy before we can get a new one.
Oh, and all boxes that enter the Bodoni home must be promptly emptied, and then the cats will sit in them. I received a box from Amazon a couple of weeks ago, which is almost big enough for two cats. It’s a lot of fun to watch the two younger cats try to assert their rights to the box.
I forgot about this! Last fall, a little Rat Terrier came to my house, scared out of his wits. I did everything I could to find his owner, and when no one claimed him, was looking for him a new home.
Then I realized that he and my Papillon Bunny were absolutely inseperable. Where you see one, you see the other. They sleep together, they play together, they eat out of the same bowl.
Now… this is not a breed I would choose. Never considered one. But it would break Bunny’s heart if Sammy left. So yeah… my dog has a dog.
My hamsters get sunflower seeds in addition to their regular food. Every so often I’ll buy a large lump of seeds designed for occasional nibbling over the course of a few weeks. Plus they get the run of the living area (under supervision) every couple of days.
I didn’t realize until my boyfriend used the term in a completely different context and my dog went apeshit that I have evidently taught Captain “pizza bones”.
The cats get good food (Wellness) and they sleep with us on the bed. A catless bed is a sad bed.
Brix likes to help me get the mail. We have a ritual - I get home and go through the back door, and she races me to the front door. I hang up my purse, then pick her up and we go get the mail. (It’s right outside the front door.) I spend extra time outside “getting the mail” so she can get her fix. And we even get the mail when the mail’s already been gotten (my sister-in-law is staying with us for a bit; sometimes she picks the mail up). She is allowed outside on her harness, but inevitably always tries to wiggle out of it.
My boys are most definitely spoiled. They both sleep with me. Since they are little and can’t jump up on the bed they alert me when it is their bed time… bark… wait…bark… until I notice and pick them up and put them on the bed. If they need to go out in the middle of the night (or want a drink of water) they will paw my face to wake me up to help them down. Upon return, wait…bark…wait…bark, until I pick them back up. Not only do they get high quality expensive pet store food, I buy four rib bones per week for them to use as chewies. Their treats are chicken breasts that I cook and dice and keep in the fridge. Each gets a bath by me every week and a hair cut as needed. I brush their teeth, clean their ears and wipe their butts after they go doodie. I very recently adopted another little dog from the shelter who was abused to the point of near starvation. She is quarantined in another part of the house now but I have no doubt she will be joining me in my bed in the coming weeks. My neighbor met her yesterday and said that she certainly scored big time when she got adopted into our family.
Try a couple of raisins, too. We used to have a hamster who was crazy for raisins, and would stand on his hind legs and dance if you waved a raisin above his nose.
Also, I kept telling my husband that the younger male cat wanted a kitten of his own. My husband kept saying, no, I was the one who wanted a kitten. Not long afterwards, one of my husband’s nephews and his family took off on a week-long cruise…leaving a female kitten outside to fend for herself for that time. So. We had an unplanned kitten, who was about 8 months old. And it turned out that the male cat DID want a kitten of his own, someone to play with and snuggle with. They are bestest buddies now, and when they’re not playing Tag or King of the Mountain or This Box Is Mine, Get Your Own, then they’re usually snuggled up together, snoozing. The female rests her head on his tummy, or he has one front leg wrapped around her.
My cats are quite spoiled. They all have the opportunity to sleep with us, and most of them do (though not usually at the same time). We’ve bought them several tall cat trees (including one built like a “real” tree that cost quite a bit more than a standard cat tree)–throughout the house there are 7 of them, so the “kids” all have places to lounge and get away from each other. There aren’t many places in the house they can’t go (my private room and the spouse’s private room, because neither are cat-proofed–but they have the run of our bedroom, the office, and all but one of the three baths. They’re allowed on the kitchen counters at will (in fact, we keep a water dish in the sink because if we put it on the floor they make a mess with it)–we don’t cook often, and when we do I make sure to carefully clean and sanitize the counters. No food poisoning yet, so I must be doing something right!
They get “kitty pudding” (meat baby food) every morning and have come to expect that. When they “ask” to play laser pointer or get up into the linen closet (and yes, they do ask), we try to accommodate them whenever possible.
One of the cats is somewhat neurotic and she and another one don’t get along at all–to the point where she started peeing and pooping in one corner of the house, and we couldn’t get her to stop. Finally, we had all the carpet ripped out and replaced with laminate wood flooring, put another cat tree in the place where she peed so she’d have some vertical space, and got a furniture-quality litterbox hide-away unit to put there. There’ve been a couple of backsliding incidents, but for the most part it’s worked like a charm.
The only thing we don’t spoil them with is food–they get good quality Iams, but not the super-premium stuff (partly because it gets really pricey and hard to find sometimes, but mostly because they just don’t like it. The Iams is a compromise between the cheap stuff (which I would never feed them) and the super high quality stuff. They seem to be doing fine, so no complaints here.)
Oh, and when we have to go away, they get boarded here. Yeah, it’s expensive. With the number of cats we have, it basically amounts to paying for a second hotel room. But we love them, and we know that at Kitty Hill they’re treated well. The staff is crazy about cats and does a great job, so we don’t have to worry about them when we’re gone.
Kimber has an insulated dog house with metal roof and siding, dog run, a kiddie pool, and a heated dog dish. She hardly uses any of it though as she sleeps with me and gets to go to work every day.
She’s obsessed with oral hygiene so I brush her teeth and sometimes I give in to the puppy eyes and floss her. She doesn’t like cold water so I just let her into my shower once a week.
She does not eat people food. I have overcompensated by buying rawhide & treats in bulk.
shifty eyes I sometimes take artistic license when I sew up her stuffies. Her hedgehog is now a pirate hog. I made her raccoon a flak jacket.
Spoiled? No. Treated and fawned over like gods? Maybe. But how else could you wake up to what I saw this morning, which was the three older cats all curled together in a pile right in front of my face. The girls usually don’t let the boy into their sleep pile. The youngest girl stayed at the foot of the bed where she wouldn’t get maimed when the pile finally exploded.
My boys have all the biggies:
Good food, including canned mixed with the kibble for dinner. Nibbles from us, plus any steak fat from my meal.
Comfy couches, beds, blankies, plus they sleep on our bed.
Access to a fully fenced dog yard where they can run and bark all day long, and supervised access to a partially fenced “park” yard, where they can scare off the pigeons and chase bunnies and squirrels.
One of them really likes a good brushing, especially after his bath.
Edit: The best part about dogs is that spoiling them is soooo easy, their expectations are pretty low and they are super easy to please!
I’ve done this too! (I like to have at least one “main” dog, plus a back-up dog or two.) 
The last one was a five-ish month-old black Lab puppy three years ago I took as a foster. First, he had garbage gut and dire gastro-intestinal issues, including lots of enthusiastic vomiting and explody-butt. No vet could figure out why, so of course he wasn’t adoptable until we got his digestive issues sorted out.
Then, his testicles refused to descend. They were hiding up there somewhere, the inguinal ring stayed open, but they wouldn’t come down. Rather than put him through possibly expensive and uncomfortable surgery to go find them, I delayed neutering on the advice of my vet. (Dogs frequently get testicular cancer at an early age if the balls don’t drop, so they need to be excavated out.) At about ten months old, huzzah! We had testicles.
But by that time, he and my Little Spotted Dog had bonded like crazy, he was and is a lovely, easy-keeper, calm (really) Labrador and I didn’t see the point of breaking him and the Little Spotted Dog up. Plus, he is just a nice, nice, easy-going dog.
He’s stuck with his silly name though. I initially figured I wouldn’t have him long; a probably pure-bred, sweet black Lab pup would be easy to find a good home for. So on the suggestion of a friend, I called him Deefer (“D” fer Dog) and he’s Deefer, Deef, or Deefy-man.
Gah. Finally my internet connection is restored. The vet is aware of and attempting to treat the problems. Thank you for the info, I will mention it next time.
FWIW: His first **full **day outside was today. He seemed to have fun, and was overjoyed to see me when I got home. Maybe this is a good thing for him (since Texas has fairly mild weather in the winter).
We take our dog with us to restaurants for Sunday dinner. Many Ann Arbor restaurants are dog-friendly with their outdoor sidewalk seating.
Obviously, this is only possible half the year, and when the weather’s nice.
Just wanted to say I sure am enjoying reading about our well-loved, happy Doper pets!
