Stairway to heaven

Aug. 31, 2006

Dear Pat,

It starts when you let dogs think they own the place. The place being the house you are making mortgage payments on.

Our dogs languish in the kitchen while we're away during the day but run wild the rest of the time. When they aren't running they're fixtures on the furniture and the bed.

My druthers do not include sleeping with dogs. They hog the covers.

DC thinks differently. She can't stand the thought that they might be uncomfortable sleeping on the floor.

If I'm sitting on the couch and one of the dogs wants up, she thinks I should move over. If a dog presents itself in front of me she thinks my obligation is to pet it. I think it's more fun to try to stare each other down.

It got worse when Alvie, our miniature beagle, showed up at our door a few years ago. He's so short that climbing stairs is a bit of a test, but he still expects to be able to do whatever Hank and Lucy do. So we were always lifting Alvie onto the furniture or the bed and sometimes carrying him up and down the stairs.

Eventually DC's parents decided we and Alvie needed doggie stairs. They're about 2 feet high and enable him to climb up to his favorite spot, a red chaise lounge. I used to like to sit on that chaise but have figured out my place in the pecking order.

We used to wonder whether Hank or Lucy was the alpha dog of our home pack. We deduced it's anxious Hank, still overwhelmed with the responsibilities of leadership. Dog trainers have told us Hank would calm down if only we were more assertive. If only we could tell him to get off the couch and go find Timmy.

Now our obedience to the rule of dogs has reached a new height in flea-brainedness, I'm afraid, all because we wanted a new king-size bed. We hadn't bought a bed in a long time and didn't realize that mattresses are much thicker than they were in the past. Perhaps now that Americans are thicker we require more padding than in the past.

The bed sits about 3 feet off the floor, so high that at 5-feet, 1-inch DC has difficulty climbing aboard. "I hate this bed," she yelled down the stairs at me the other night.

Even Hank and Lucy have trouble jumping up, and we're afraid they'll hurt themselves getting down. They aren't spring chickens anymore.

DC thinks the bed may be a danger to Alvie's life. I wonder if she's concerned about falling off the plateau herself.

Solving the dilemma of the tall bed seems to have fallen to me. That pecking order thing.

First I found a bed frame that sits only 3 inches off the floor. That helps but not enough.

Alvie's pet stairs still aren't high enough to reach the top of the bed, so I checked to see if the pet store had even bigger stairs. Stairs like a firetruck.

Apparently the manufacturers of doggie stairs aren't yet clued in to the market created by the bigger human beds.

Fortunately we have a friend with many handy skills. As we speak he is sawing and hammering away at a bigger stairway that will take Alvie, Hank and Lucy to their new dog bed in the sky.

Do you want it carpeted? he asked. Of course.

Love, Sam

Sam Blackwell is managing editor of the Southeast Missourian.