Slippery Slope

Willie on Julie's bed“We’re never taking that dog into the bed with us,” Richard said before we even brought Willie home.

“He’s never even going to see upstairs,” I added.  “There’s just no reason for him to go there.  And this way, we can be sure the bedrooms don’t have any dog hair or allergens that might disturb sensitive guests.”

Then again, we’d also decided that our new dog would not be permitted on the furniture.  But, after we met him, brought him home, and gave him a new name, we decided he could sit beside me on the loveseat in the sunroom.  And ONLY on the loveseat in the sunroom.  Then, one day after Willie hopped up to sit beside Richard on another chair, we relaxed some more and “decided” that this was okay, as long as Willie had been invited onto the furniture.

If you lay down with dogs you’ll get up with fleas.

This was one of the things my mother said a lot during my childhood – along with “A stitch in time saves nine” and other phrases that would look at home cross-stitched on a pillow.  It’s something I imagine her parents said to her, too, and which meant I should choose my friends wisely.

I thought about the literal meaning of the phrase one night as I sat on an inflatable mattress on the floor of my sister’s New York City apartment, propped up on pillows between a sleeping Richard on my left and – for the first time — a sleeping Willie on my right.

We brought Willie’s wire crate with us the first time the three of us spent the night at my sister’s, where he slept about three feet away from the foot of our bed.  We brought the crate with us the second time, too, but after Richard settled himself on the air mattress, instead of putting Willie in his crate, I picked him up off the floor and plopped him beside Richard as I went off to brush my teeth.

I can’t say why I put a dog on the bed after we’d vowed we never would.  But I realized as I stood before the mirror that I was grinning.

This was, of course, the slipperiest of slopes, and I knew that by doing this even one time Willie might now expect to accompany us – his pack — to bed; he might now yowl from his crate in the kitchen after lights out when we climbed the stairs at home.  But as I got into bed and adjusted the covers, Willie turned a tight circle, settled himself near my hip, and sighed a sigh of deep contentment.  Richard reached across me to ruffle Willie’s head, then chuckled and turned onto his side.  Moments later both Richard and Willie were sound asleep.

Unable to concentrate any longer on the book in my lap, I removed my eyeglasses, switched off the light, and settled myself with my friends – my pack — not at all worried about fleas.