This American (no) Life

Dogger is now officially a Big Girl and is no longer sleeping in her crate.I had been working on her with this before I left on vacation. I put a baby gate in the door of the office and left her out of her crate to her own devises. I tried to leave her out at night as well but she would wake me up whining so she was still crate bound at night. While I was on vacation she slept in with Nephdog and didn’t use her crate at all. When I got back from vacation I decided that she was through with the crate all together.

This left Dogger with out a proper bed. The floor is carpeted and she seemed happy to sleep under the desk. I wasn’t happy with that. I tried to put some of her sheets under the desk to make it softer for her but by the time I came home she had shoved them into the middle of the floor.

Me - You can’t sleep there.

Dogger - I like it here.

Me - That is not where your bed is. You bed is over there. That is where you sleep.

Dogger - I sleep here.

Me - That is where my desk chair lives. That is my desk chairs bed.

Dogger - We can share!

Me - No.

Dogger - I like it under here! Its all cavey! It’s my den. Yay Den!

Me - Its all desky. Its my desk. Yay Desk!

It took the rest of the week but Dogger was slowly getting used to the idea that her bed was not under the desk. I decided it was time for a real bed for Dogger. Dogger loves Offically Sanctioned Dog Beds - because she thinks they are delicious. The couple of times over the years that I invested in OSDB for her, she ate them. If I wanted to buy a OSDB large enough for Dagger it would be expensive and it might turn into a big, expensive after dinner mint. I needed a bed she could not eat. I decided what she needed was a crib mattress.


I went shopping. If this was NPRs This American Life this is where the “Music of This Is Interesting” would go. It doesn’t matter how banal it was whatever the featured person said, it would suddenly through the magic of post production editing, it would be meaningful. (Insert frooffy This American Life music cue here)

First I tried my neighborhood Wal-Mart. The cheapest crib bed they had in stock was $47. I wasn’t going to pay $47 for a dog bed. I decided to use up what remained of my $2.21 a gallon gas to go on a crib mattress search. I went a discount department store with large baby section to shop for mattresses. When you are at a department store, ever just go to the baby section? Ever just kind of walk through there? No. No you haven’t. The baby department is not like the home furnishings department. You don’t casually pick up bumper pads or diaper genies(tm).If you don't have a baby there is nothing there for you. The baby section is for people with babies. it was full of new parents trying to decide if the super high end baby stroller was worth the second mortgage of if they shuld save their money for the super deluxer baby swing instead while trying to figure out if they were going to be able to put whatever they bought together before the kid started kindergarten. This is the department store version of the feminene hygene section of the grocery store. And I was in there looking for a dog bed.

I discovered travel crib mattresses. I thought I might have a chance with those. They were considerably cheaper then the other crib mattresses ( $19 v.$129.00) and I thought they might work - and they would if Dagger weighed 11 lbs and was under 28 inches long. I decamped to another store and discovered they didn’t have crib mattresses at all. There was another Wal-Mart. This store had the $30 crib mattress of my dreams. I picked up a mattress pad and took them home. Now when Dagger sleeps under the desk she is ignoring a much nicer bed then before.