I have a very sweet Irish Setter named “Baron”, he loves to sleep in our bed. This was fine when he weighed 10 lbs but as you can imagine, not so much now that he is 60 lbs.
My boyfriend and I have been struggling to get him out of our bed but being a very cuddly boy he absolutely refuses to go. Crying and pacing throughout the night and keeping us up until we give in and allow him into our bed yet again so we can sleep. Our sleeps were broken, cramped and we were getting very cranky. We decided we would look into the possibility of purchasing a king sized bed. We measured out our bedroom and realized that our bedroom would simply not accommodate a bed that large. What would we do? Would we be sleeping in these closed quarters forever, being miserable? We created this problem by letting him in our bed in the first place we just need to keep reminding ourselves of this.
During one of our sleepless nights I was on the computer looking at “Pinterest”, when I came across a great idea. Someone had made a bed for their pet next to the head of their bed. It was the same height as their bed so the pet thought it was actually sleeping with them but it really was in their own bed. What a terrific idea. I put my boyfriend to work right away. This had to be the answer we had been searching for. He built a prototype, no point building something really nice and expensive if it wasn’t going to work. I put a dog bed on it, a quilt, one of my pillows, some of his toys and tadah! It was his! HE LOVED IT! He slept in it right away. I could reach over and touch him while he slept and he loved that. Our sleepless nights were over!
He still comes over for cuddles at the beginning of the night and first thing in the morning but when we tell him to go to his bed he is happy to go, no crying, no pacing, no arguments. It was too easy, too easy. We will be building a nicer bed this summer now that we know he loves it.
