Move Over, Rover

Three years ago a girlfriend and I rented a house on the coast of Oregon for three days for a nice vacation with our five dogs and her two very young kids. It was sooooo peaceful! Okay, it wasn’t, but at least it was noisy and chaotic out of town and that’s what we were aiming for.

While we were there, rather than sleeping in a bed that my dachshunds are too short to get on and off without assistance (and no, I haven’t yet invented a portable mechanical lift for them nor have they learned to use the mini-trampoline), the four of us slept on the sofa which was much closer to the floor. The sofa in this case was a sectional with room for all of us. It worked out well.

As soon as I could afford it, I bought a sectional for our house–a sectional with a chaise one one end. I thought the dogs could have all the space they wanted on the sofa and I could prop myself up to read or lie down in comfort on the chaise end. I envisioned myself with a cup of tea and a good book, gazing contently upon sleeping wiener dogs. Of course that’s not the way things worked out (you knew that already, right?) The dogs took one look at the chaise and decided that it was the best part of the new sofa, except for the new furniture smell, so they immediately planted their flag in the corner, took over the comfy cushion next to the reading lamp, and demanded I serve them tea and cookies. Okay, not tea, but cookies.

One day not long ago, I saw a picture on Facebook of a woman sleeping on a sectional sofa with nine dachshunds. Others may have viewed the picture and thought, “Crazy dog lady,” but what I saw was that she and they had an extra piece to their sectional. I immediately measured my tiny living room and found that if I squeezed things in tight and moved one of the dog beds that no one ever uses into another room, I could have a roomier sofa too! And maybe, just maybe, I could use the chaise. I boiled a teakettle full of water.

I’ve had my extra 23″ of seating space for two months now. I still have to sit in the middle of the sofa, propping my tea precariously on my chest (which gets harder with each passing year) and my feet propped up on the hard coffee table.  Watson and Penny and an assortment of stuffed animals, pillows and blankets cover the chaise. Justin is often there as well, but sometimes he enjoys stretching all 34″ of himself out on the other end of the sofa (which, if you do the math, means that I actually have 11 inches less space than I did before).

There’s only one thing to do–save up until I can afford to replace the sofa end with another chaise. They may have me outnumbered, but I’m gonna have that tea in comfort some day.