Sneaky Duncan and Miserable Bones

Despite our best efforts at nurturing a different set of values, nature has won out at our house. Bones is two years older, is larger, and was with us first. She insists on enforcing the instinctive pack mentality which requires a hierarchy of privilege, so Duncan gets second dibs on everything. If we don’t separate them during feeding, Bones will gobble down his food and guard hers for later. She also doesn’t allow him attention if she has a craving for some (which is much of the time). She sits under the table in the kitchen and he cowers in the corners. He can come to the top of the stairs at night while she gets the bedroom. Sometimes she’ll let him in the living room when we’re watching TV and sometimes she won’t.

Often when she doesn’t let him in the living room—or when he’s fed up with the small parcel she’s allowing him—instead of sitting on the cold tiles of the kitchen, he’ll simply head upstairs to the comfort of his bed. Or so we thought. A while back we caught him sneaking into the guest bedroom at night and sleeping on the bed in there. Actually we caught him sprinting back to his own bed in the hopes of not getting caught; he was smart enough to return before our alarms woke us up in the morning, but a few middle-of-the-night bathroom visits caught him off-guard. They know they’re not allowed on the furniture, but he was trying to pull a fast one. We’ve started keeping that door shut and it’s taken care of the problem. Recently, though, we heard thumping on the upstairs floor anytime we walked from the living room to the kitchen on our way to the stairs. He always left with enough time to get settled into his own space before we could see him, but we finally figured out he’s been hanging out on our bed when we’re downstairs and Bones won’t let him join us.

Two of allergies I’ve been recently diagnosed with, remember, are dust mites and dog dander. After washing all the bedding and vacuuming carefully (not for the first time ever, by the way), we went shopping last night. We returned home with new hypoallergenic pillows and foam mattress pad and a baby gate. The dogs are no longer allowed in the bedroom. That’s a blow for Bones, because not only is she used to being in that room anytime we are, it’s where she prefers to hang out when we’re not home. She was so confused last night when we were heading to bed and she encountered that new barrier. She gave us pleading looks and hunted for any way she could squeeze around the edges. Now we already have one of these downstairs to protect Duncan during dinner. We don’t actually secure it but instead just lean it against the doorframe, and there have been a few instances that it’s fallen over and made a horrendous racket; so Bones is deathly afraid of putting herself in the fall zone and didn’t want to get too close to the new one. The struggle of fear versus desire played across her face as she tried to understand this incomprehensible new situation. She finally settled in the hallway off to the side of the doorway, but was obviously miserable about it.

(I, on the other hand, was less stuffy and congested this morning than I have been recently.)