Sleeping Arrangements

Daniel and I have a strict policy for sleeping: no dogs allowed in bed. If we had children, I am sure this policy would extend to them as well.

While Daniel and I lived in separate states, I started to allow Sophie to sleep with me. I slept better having a warm body in the bed next to me. Whenever Daniel came home on the weekends {or when I went to visit him}, we would boot Sophie to her doggy bed. This was fairly easy to implement because our bed is actually too tall for her to climb onto by herself.

Fast forward to now. We live in a camper. Quarters are small. The bed is not as high as our bed. The first two nights Sophie had no problems. She slept on the couch and didn't complain.

The third night, we went to bed and she started whining. Concerned that she might need to use the bathroom, I took her on a quick midnight walk. We came back and she proceeded to jump on the bed with us. We made her get down off of the bed. Then she proceeded to pace and occasionally put her paws up on the foot of the bed and I would tell her to get down.

This may be a losing battle for us - I caught her on the bed. Asleep.
 

Last night we had a repeat of the night before. She just wants to get in bed with us. I am through with midnight walks. Since I wasn't ready to go to sleep at the same time as Daniel last night, we closed the divider curtain and I laid on the couch with Sophie and watched TV for half an hour. That seemed to help her and she only tried once to get on the bed. Hopefully we won't have to keep going through this every night.

Overall, Sophie has been doing really well with the whole "living in a camper" thing. I take her on morning hikes and we have a big field next to us to play in. She can sit and look out the window from the couch and from the banquet. She knows when I say "Go inside" that means to go to the camper door. We are going to have to be more diligent with giving her baths on a regular basis. In an 1800 sf house, it isn't as big of a deal to periodically miss a bath, but in a 300 sf camper, a smelly dog is not so pleasant...

View from our bed.