[Home] [Meeting Info] [SIGs]
[Newsletter] [Interest to Fans] [Con Reports] [Fiction] [Directions] [Links] [Site
Map] [About Us]
(Editor's Note: This article originally appeared in The Starship Express Copyright © 1988 Philip J. De Parto Volume 2, Number 5. It was excerpted with permission from "Dogstory" Copyright © 1988 Leora Baeder. Both appearances are reprinted with permission of the author.)
… So, my parents went away for two weeks, giving me a verbal encyclopedia of dog instructions before they left.
Now, boxers don't understand the concept of time. There is NOW, as in "I want to go out NOW", and SOON, as in "Leora is fixing dinner so I will eat SOON". Two weeks is meaningless to a boxer, so since my parents weren't home NOW, obviously, they would therefore be home SOON. The endless vigil started. Tawny took the first watch.
That's another thing -- with four boxers, one is always on guard duty. I know that they rotate duty shifts, but I've never seen the duty roster. I think they inscribe it on a dog bone with their teeth and pass it around. You bite off your part of the bone when your shift is over. Periodically, they try to hand it to me and look disgusted when I stupidly give it right back, untouched.
So, Tawny volunteered for the night shift. She adores my mother and decided to wait up for her. Meanwhile, I had agreed to sleep downstairs with the dogs, in my parents' king-sized bed.
I was all set to go to sleep. I peeled the bed open like an onion ( the dogs lay on it all day so my mother has layers of old sheets and coverings on it to protect it from 16 clawed feet.) I finally reached the proper Insert-Body-Here layer and I started to crawl in when, suddenly the pack realized that this was a deviation from previously established protocol, and what was I doing downstairs, and where is Mommy!
Three of them jumped on the bed to see what was going on, and I made a desperate grab for the covers and threw myself into the bed, trying to take up as much room as possible before they beat me to it. Then, Tawny wanted a piece of the action, so she jumped on me too. I ended up with enough room to sleep on my left side, and the sheets actually reached the middle of my stomach. I felt very pleased with myself, though, because I had done infinitely better now than the last time my parents had gone away. This time I actually got a spot of bed and part of a sheet. Last time, they not only kicked me out of the bed, but they also kicked me out of their dog bed and made me leave the blanket.
Undaunted, I tried to move them over. Moving a sleepy, lonely boxer who has now recognized you a Surrogate Head of the Pack and wants to cuddle (by sleeping on top of you) is like pushing a wall of jello -- it just oozes around your fingers. And if you do manage to move one, there are three others who are now vying for that wide-open vacated space, plus the one that you moved which is now clawing and straining to get back to the chosen spot before the other three migrate. Land wars, and I'm a real estate agent.
I finally gave up and started to sleep, with three boxers behind me and one in front somehow holding herself from falling off the edge of the bed in front of me by digging into the mattress with her toenails, when suddenly Tawny, on duty, heard a noise. It was 1:00 AM. "WOOF" and "OWWWWWW", she said, bolting upright from the pack of sleeping animals near my left leg. A car had come in across the street and Tawny thought it was Mommy. Not to be outdone, the other three joined her, barking and wagging tails as they stampeded to the door in the dark. I heard a crunch as, blind, the first dog hit it.
"Two weeks," I yelled at the top of my lungs, to no avail. Suddenly I realized I had the entire bed to myself and started grabbing blankets and space-just as the herd returned and Land Wars II, The Boxer Rebellion started. I was pinned down once again, like Gulliver with large, fuzzy Lilliputians. They were upset because I had moved.
I woke up three more times that night. I love it when boxers snore. Hannah, in particular, plasters the top of her head into the small of my back as hard as she can. The auditory and vibrational resonances at 4:30 AM are unmatched, as is my reaction - waking up in a strange bed, in the pitch dark, and unable to move because four dark things with feet and wet noses are pinning me down. It is a shame she is asleep for it, but my shrieks eventually do wake her up, whereupon she steps on my chest so she can put her nose in my face to see what is wrong. Then the other three shift over and take her vacated spot and she spends the next ten minutes wandering around the bed to find a new spot on me, to crash. And I do mean crash.
…My best experience, though, was with Chip. He started snoring, very loudly, at 5:00 AM one night. Somehow, he had gotten between my ankles and - between him and the blankets - had my legs immobilized. They were starting to cramp.
In my semi-conscious state I thrashed around, but Chip weighs over 70 lb. I slowly returned to consciousness and looked over my shoulder to see, in the brightening dawn, three pairs of boxer eyes (Princess, Hannah, and Tawny) staring hatefully at the noisy, unconscious Chip at the bottom of the bed. They looked at me with the same joy that the Europeans had when Patton marched the liberating American forces towards Messina in World War II. Then I knew I had allies. They moved over to give me room.
Calling Chip's name didn't work, nor did thrashing around, and I couldn't reach him from the top of the bed. With a herculean effort, I pulled one cramp-distorted clobbed foot free and pushed him with it. Repeated pushing didn't help, and the pain in the other trapped foot was getting intense, so I finally shoved him off the bed.
As I expected, Chip's front paws automatically came down like landing gear, and he staggered off the bed, choked off in mid-snore. The girls sniffed at me in gratitude. Then, after circling the foot of the bed, like an airplane getting ready to land, Chip jumped back up, landing one foot east of his original position before the girls could take it over. He closed his eyes, we all rolled over (two of us sighed in contentment), and as we gently, blissfully drifted to sleep we were suddenly, rudely awakened again as the entire bed shook as if from a seismic disturbance. Four pair of eyes (the girls and I) looked at the foot of the bed and were met by a pair of blue-greed, glow-in-the-dark, miserable male boxer eyes.
Chip had the hiccups.
Back to Starship Express main page
Return to SFABC Home Page