My determined dog

My determined dog just won’t let me sleep through the night.
In my last post, I wrote that I’d set up a perimeter of laundry baskets, table trays and kitchen table chairs in an effort to keep him off the bed.
All I wanted was one full night’s sleep — one night without waking up, curled up in the fetal position while my dog is spread out, taking up all the space and all my covers.
Well, the night after I wrote my last post, I improved my perimeter — adding another table tray and another laundry basket — and it worked. But I didn’t get my full night’s rest.
Nope; I woke up at about 3 a.m. screaming one particularly bad four-letter word and clutching my right leg. It was one of those miserable, wake-you-up-in-the-middle-of-the-night-because-it-hurts-so-bad cramps, right in my calf.
“Can’t we get rid of all this stuff now?” Brent said to me the following day. “I’m sick of having all this crap around the bed.”
I shot him a dirty look. “No way,” I said. “Didn’t you hear me screaming in the middle of the night?”
He shook his head. Of course he didn’t. It must be wonderful to sleep so deeply. So I explained to him about the cramp in my calf.
“Just one night, hun. Just let me have one night,” I said.
So we left the perimeter up on Friday night too. Sometime in the early morning, the high-pitched whine of my very bothered dog woke up me. I refused to lift my head off the pillow, convinced that ignoring him would do the trick.
And then, there was that familiar plopping sound and the weight of the bed shifting as my 90 lb. dog landed on it. This is no small feat for him.
He had managed to jump over a row of table trays onto our bed. Mind you that our bed is so tall, Sensi used to struggle with jumping on it without any obstacles in his way. And though you wouldn’t know it, he also has what in humans would be called a torn ACL in one of his rear legs, making it difficult for him to jump. Additionally, he couldn’t have gotten a running start — because of how the bed is positioned, he had about three feet of floor space between the table trays and the wall.
Oh, my determined dog.
At this point, I did wake up and tell him to get down. And he did, though he hesitated — I’m sure wondering if he’d be able to jump down the way he came without planting his head into the wall.
The barricades came down the next night. What’s the point? The dog won that battle.
Meanwhile, I still haven’t gotten a full night’s sleep.
I’m back to the old routine of waking up, telling the dog to get down and hoping he does so before I fall back asleep. At which point he just climbs right back up anyhow.