Rachel Wise.
I couldn't make the bed this morning.
When I went to pull the duvet up it made a grumpy noise.
It happens on cold mornings. It's not that the duvet itself resents being fluffed up and straightened out, it's the blonde fluffy chihuahua under the duvet that's unhappy about the intrusion.
Bunnie does not appreciate bed-making. It lets the cold air in and ruins her perfectly constructed duvet-nest. And it takes her ages to unmake the bed and get it back to how she likes it.
So this morning I left it. Bunnie is getting on a bit and since she's gone deaf and more than a bit blind she claims all sorts of privileges that lesser chihuahuas would never get away with.
Such as hogging the bedclothes. Actually - she hogs the entire bed.
How one 2kg dog can take up an entire queen sized bed beats me, I've never seen her do it as she makes her manoeuvres under cover of darkness. I just know that I start out in the centre of my side of the bed and by morning I'm hanging off the edge with just a corner of the sheet to cover my shivering body, while a warm and toasty chihuahua is stretched out over the rest of my space.
And she seems to weigh a lot more than 2kg. I think she has a special relationship with gravity, whereby she can increase her weight according to the amount of shove I'm using to push her back over into her space.
Yes I realise I just conceded that some of my bed is "her" space. I know when I'm fighting a losing battle.
I started fighting it when she arrived as a tiny bundle of grey fluff that fit into one hand, and I proclaimed that she would be sleeping in her basket on the bedroom floor.
Half-an-hour post bedtime the basket was on my bedside table so I could console the sad and lonely ball of fluff by patting it.
Five minutes later my patting arm got tired. A moment after that the fluff was in the bed and by the time the alarm went off the next morning I was pushed to the edge and hanging on by my toenails.
As time has gone on she has developed a snore to go along with the bed-hogging. And a recoil reflex so that if I do manage to shove her over a bit in the night she returns exactly from whence she was shoved. Immediately, before I get the chance to shift into the vacant spot.
But if I shift slightly, leaving even a centimetre void, she's in it, without even seeming to wake up. I reach out for my glass of water at 3am ... and go to recline back into bed ... too late, space taken, chihuahua in residence.
And if it wasn't bad enough that she claims a spot of bed, now she's getting geriatric and bossy she insists on being carried there. Despite that she can walk perfectly well.
You'd think if she wouldn't walk to bed, it would be easy to leave her on the couch (yes ... couch) and get a peaceful night's sleep but no. If she's forgotten during the turning-lights-and-TV-off and going to bed routine she gets cross.
Bunnie, left somewhere she doesn't want to be, starts to shout. She shouts really loudly and does not stop until someone sorts things out.
Shouting also applies to yelling at people who are not sharing their toast crusts, not lifting her up onto the furniture, leaving her outside when she wants to be in, leaving her inside when she wants to be out, or if she's faced with an empty bowl or someone else in her basket.
I have explained to her that shouting is rude, but as she can't hear me it did no good. Youngest daughter has suggested we use sign language, which we discovered just made us look odd and the dog look confused.
The only tried and true way to stop her from yelling is to figure out what she's on about and put it to rights. The end result being that I appear to be a servant to a grouchy and demanding hairy canine tyrant.
And while that may seem wrong, I will go along with it and do as I'm told. Or else she might not let me have my share of the bed.