Excuse me? Whose bed do you think this is?

Apparently, Oliver thinks that it is his bed! Both of the dogs sleep in bed with us at night, and they do both get under the covers, but Oliver has taken it too far lately! H often brings a toys to bed with him, and he will snuggle up with it like a child does their favorite item. This was fine when it was a soft toy, like the little pink/purple elephant in the picture, or even the little red thing (its actually a ruminant of an old baseball cap of Steven's that he has chewed and destroyed till there is just this stiff little piece of nylon canvas). But the other night, Oliver spent like ten minutes parading around the house locating and carrying each of the three different items pictured here into the bed with him. He insisted on having the elephant, the hat piece, AND the over sized rawhide bone! He got really annoyed if we took one away, or moved it too far from where he was laying against Steven's legs. The bone is quite big and hard, and doesn't feel good to roll over onto in the middle of the night, so I kept waiting for him to settle down and begin falling asleep, and I would slip it out from beneath the covers, and drop it on the floor beside the bed, as soon as he heard it hit the ground he was up and going after it. He retrieved it and returned it to bed with him at least 3 times! Then I got smarter (or so I thought), and I waited for him to fall asleep, then I snuck the bone away, and quietly got up and went and placed it very softly in his toy bucket in the living room. This time he didn't get woken up by any sounds, so he was none the wiser. But the next morning when I woke up, I had a big bone wedged under my butt! Apparently he awoke in the night, noticed the bone missing, went and found it and returned it to bed with him!

That which we persist in doing becomes easier, not that the task itself has become easier, but that our ability to perform it has improved.
-Ralph Waldo Emmerson