Tuesday, November 09, 2004

People not like me and you

From a Slate article on the pitfalls of sleeping with your pets:

Dr. Nicholas Dodman, author of If Only They Could Speak and director of the Animal Behavior Clinic at Tufts University School of Veterinary Medicine, celebrates the "warm and fuzzy feeling" of all species curling up in bed together. This is not to say that some animals don't abuse the privilege. He tells of one couple who came to him after their Yorkshire terrier, who liked to settle in with the wife when she went to bed early to read, took to lunging at the husband when he arrived. There was an obvious solution, and the couple chose it: The husband moved to the guest room. When this proved maritally unsatisfying, they turned to Dr. Dodman. He says such animals have to be re-educated by being placed in a crate at night, or even attached to a dog bed with a long line.
Emphasis added at the parts where I thought: “what morons.” My solution would have involved a rolled-up newspaper.

3 comments:

Erick Erickson said...

Amen! My wife got a cat that decided to sleep between us and claw me if I got close. He did it once. Never again. Grow some spine people.

Anonymous said...

Could it be that they were both tenured Ivy League professors? Heh.

Attila said...

They let the dog sleep with them and when the husband had to leave, it was "maritally unsatisfying"? What kind of marital satisfaction could these clowns have had in the first place?

I totally can't relate. We never even let our kids sleep in bed with us.

(Admittedly, having our dog share our bed is not an issue for us; she's a 95-pound lab, not a freakin' puffball.)