dogs Archives – Lisa Scottoline

by Lisa Scottoline

Size matters in only one thing.

Night tables.

I’m on a quest for the perfect night table.

This quest began forty-odd years ago.

I’ve looked for the perfect night table longer than I’ve looked for the perfect man.

Honestly, only one is essential in a bedroom.

Let me explain.

I started life with a really small night table, and I would put my glasses on the night table and they would fall off instantly, usually face down.

I scratched glasses nonstop.

I would pick them up if I was still awake, but if I was too tired, I would leave them there. And step on them on my way to the bathroom.

Plus I never had enough room for a real-sized lamp, which I needed to read.

The night lamp is itself a quandary.

If you get one that’s big enough to read by, you won’t be able to reach the knob and turn it off when you want to go to sleep.

And if you get one that’s too small, you’ll stop reading because it’s too hard on your eyes, then you’ll start scrolling Instagram and end up hating yourself.

The only thing instant about Instagram is self-hate.

I actually don’t know if the pretty shiny people on Instagram are real.

If they are, do they scroll Instagram and end up hating their lives, too?

To return to point, in time I learned that lamp size didn’t matter because inevitably, the dog would fall asleep on my arm and I didn’t have the heart to move him to turn off the lamp anyway.

I’d lie wake in the brightly-lit bedroom, only one of us snoring.

Any true dog lover knows to stay put when your dog falls asleep on you.

Like, our dogs teach us to stay.

The other bad thing about my too-small night table was that I had to stack my books on the floor, where they would be ready for me to slip on when I went to the bathroom.

It wasn’t a bedroom, it was a booby trap.

And I was the booby, trapped.

So at some point I started using a big-ass night table, which was actually an antique card table I had for years.

At first I was excited. I could put all my books on it, and a big-ass lamp, a big-ass Yeti of ice water, and a big-ass jug of Cetaphil. My phone charger would be closest to the bed, plus the lint roller in case I found a tick on a dog before bedtime.

What, you don’t lint-roll your dog for ticks before bed?

Must be nice.

To return to point, I just fell out of love with my big-ass night table.

It was so big that I would hit my hip on it every time I got up to go to the bathroom. Not only that, but what I learned from having the big-ass night table is that you use only the three inches closest to the bed.

The rest is just clutter you can’t reach anyway.

A night table that you makes you get up defeats the purpose.

Also the dog told you to stay.

So the quest continues.

By Lisa Scottoline

I love sleeping with dogs.

But sleeping with a puppy is a different matter.

Let me explain.

You may know that I recently added a new member to my family, namely Eve, who is now a seven-month-old cavalier King Charles Spaniel. She joins my other two Cavaliers, Boone and Kit, who are almost fourteen now and differ on their opinion of her.

Boone loves Eve.

Kit wishes her dead.

I’m hoping he comes around.

Spoiler alert: He’s not going to.

But so far he’s not trying to kill her.

And Kit has his adorable moments with Eve. Like this morning, I took them out for a walk, and he peed on her leg.

By the way, it was raining.

So I actually got to watch a demonstration of “don’t pee on my leg and tell me it’s raining.”

Which is the perfect description of my second marriage.

This is only one of the many great things about dogs.

In any event, I love sleeping with Eve, but she’s very busy all night long.

At this point you’re wondering why I don’t put her in a crate.

Because I tried to in the beginning, but she cried and I’m a big softie.

Luckily she’s never peed on the bed and told me it was raining, but she is an insanely restless sleeper.

First, she loved to bring her toys on the bed and squeak them most of the night.

I took away the squeaky ones, and she started playing with the ball, rolling it around the cover, then on my body.

I took away the ball, and she would jump off the bed and find my socks on the floor, bring them up, and drop them on my face.

Then I picked up all my socks and took away all the toys and she found a way to amuse herself, running up and down the ramp that leads to the bed.

I couldn’t take that away because I already felt heartless.

Plus how else do you get a dog onto a bed?

Where she will disrupt your sleep.

Obviously, it doesn’t make a lot of sense. The sensible thing to do would be to put the dog in a crate and a moat around the bed.

But not all decisions are sensible.

That’s why God made divorce.

Meanwhile every single piece of furniture in my house has either a ramp or a set of little wooden stairs, but Eve loves to chews wood, so she makes a meal of those stairs.

She’s on an all-wood diet.

She eats doors and baseboards, and now my place looks like I live with a woodchuck.

Now you’re probably asking, why don’t you spray the wood with that stuff called Bitter Apple, which is supposed to make dogs not chew wood?

The answer is, I do, and Eve thinks it improves the taste of wood.

It’s the dressing on her wood salad.

She would drink Bitter Apple if I let her.

And when she’s not eating wood, she’s running around outside, finding a rock, and chewing that, too.

In the beginning, I started taking the rocks from her and putting them on a pile on the table. Now the table holds a pyramid of rocks, like oranges at the grocery store.

I should sell rocks.

Or I could spray them with Bitter Apple, then Eve would have a rock casserole.

I took her to puppy kindergarten and puppy elementary school, and next week we start puppy middle school.

After that, puppy Harvard.

She learned all her lessons, including Leave It, which I now use forty-five times a day, when she finds a sock, chews wood, or eats a rock.

And she Leaves It.

Until she finds something else.

This is all by way of saying, I love this puppy.

She’s completely adorable, despite all the puppy things she does.

Or maybe because of them.

She’s simply an incredibly affectionate ball of fluff.

When she finally settles down to sleep at my side, she has an adorable snore.

She loves to snuggle and kiss, which is a job requirement for any animal I live with.

Actually she’s a Make-out Queen, but I won’t elaborate.

She loves people, other dogs, and fun in general.

All the time, every minute.

Even at night, but that’s okay.

Life is to be savored, all the time.

And that’s what Eve reminds me.

Big-Ass Night Table

The Tao of Eve

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