Thursday, September 2, 2021

The most irritating problem every day

On my trips, I encounter many problems each day, bears in the camp, ravishing raccoons, tripping over hidden fire pits, Defender time-outs, rain, wind, snow, etc. etc. etc. But the most irritating problem I encounter each and every day is after I let Donner into the tent.  When I enter later, I inevitably find him laying down, often sound asleep, on my side of the tent, on my one-person air mattress. Often, I can toss some treats to his side of the tent and he will fetch them, but after a while he catches onto my gambit.  More often than not, I have to pull or push him to his bed. But there have been times where I did not have the heart to disturb him, and so I slept on his beds.  Once, at Badlands, as I stood outside the tent talking with someone, I heard him inside the tent “making his bed,” as dogs are often wont to do when they paw at the ground. How nice, I thought, he’s making his bed in his tent. What a good dog.  Wrong. What a bad dog! When I entered the tent, I discovered that he was making MY bed, and had scratched several long tears in the mattress, deflating it permanently.  So, this year, I purchases  queen-sized air mattress that just fits inside the tent, and now he can have whatever side of the bed he wishes.  But to prevent him from making that bed and ruining my sleep, I also purchased a green 1600-thread queen-sized sheet. But he is full of surprises so I do not know what to expect..

 

No comments:

Post a Comment