[Dailydrool] Waterbeds

[Elizabeth Lindsey]

Drool posts this week keep resurrecting old memories for me. First  
dog weight charts and now waterbeds.

One summer in college I spent three months housesitting for a family  
with four ancient hunting beagles and a not-quite-as-old lab mix. The  
beagles had been outdoor dogs until they became elderly, and then  
they were brought inside to live out the last of their lives in  
heated and air-conditioned comfort. But no attempt was made to  
housebreak them. Instead, their humans just put linoleum down on all  
the floors and bought stock in paper towels.

The lab mix had been housebroken, but beagles' influence was too  
strong, and the lab mix decided she didn't want to be left out of the  
fun. So I'd go to my job at the library during the day, and then  
return to the house and all those dogs to clean the floors for an  
hour or so.

Part of my job, and the family was very insistent on this, was to  
sleep on their heated waterbed with the five dogs. It's what the dogs  
were used to, and the family wanted their routine changed as little  
as possible. Wow, a waterbed! How cool would that be?

I lasted about a week on that bed with those dogs.

Every night we'd all get on the bed and settle down for the night.  
Then the dogs would start taking turns jumping on and off the bed to  
go pee on the floor. All night long. Every time they jumped off and  
on, the bed would slosh around and I'd be rocked awake by the swells.  
I'd just get back to sleep again and another dog would jump off. I'll  
admit to being a light sleeper anyway, but that was ridiculous.

The novelty of sleeping on a real waterbed wasn't enough to put up  
with feeling as if I was spending the night in a storm-tossed boat. I  
finally told my sister I'd pay her a third of what the family was  
paying me if she'd spend the night on that bed with those five dogs.  
The family were more her friends than mine anyway. Once she's asleep,  
she can sleep through absolutely anything, including dogs jumping on  
and off a waterbed all night long. She earned some real easy money  
that summer, and I slept on the spring mattress in the little boy's  
room. Without any of the dogs joining me. And I still had the floors  
to clean in the morning before work.

To make this basset related, our Elsinore and young Charlie sleep in  
crates at night while Ken and I sleep on a Tempurpedic mattress that  
doesn't have any give to it. I did an experimental belly flop on it  
the first day we had it, and it was like landing on wet cement. It's  
a lovely mattress that barely moves when the people on it turn over  
or get up in the night. I'll put the dogs up on the bed with us as a  
special treat when we stay in motels, but it's not a good night's  
sleep for me, even though they do stay on the bed and don't  
reposition themselves very often. Crates are wonderful things and are  
so mattresses that don't move!

Elizabeth