Senility

Wanda is 11 years old. She is nearly blind and becoming more and more infantile by the day. Don't worry, she's a dog. This onset of insanity isn't ludicrously premature :-)

As I type this, she is staring at me, threatening to pull the same naughty stunt that she has been pulling the past few days. I spend most of my time sitting on the sofa-bed in the family room. The furniture is arranged much differently than it normally is and I more or less live in here. Both of these things are wayyyy out of the routine that our dear golden retriever has settled into. To make up for this bizarre situation, Wanda has decided that she belongs on the bed with me. This would be fine except for how she wants to do this.

I started out sitting on the left side of the couch, merely because that was the side I collapsed on when I got home from the hospital. Wanda got used to climbing up on the right side. She wasn't incredibly smart about it, though. She inevitably would end up trying to sit in my lap and/or jumping over the back of the couch. The former was simply irritating, while the latter was frankly dangerous for the silly dog. I don't know why she thought it was a good idea to make that jump... I'm blaming her cataracts.

Now I'm sitting on the right side of the bed. This move was made due to logistics; it just makes more sense. But now Wanda is super confused. She still tries to get up on the right side of the bed, i.e. on top of me. She gets up and I have no option but to have her continue walking over me until I get her onto the vacant half of the bed. There isn't enough room to have her turn around and get back down. If she was a puppy I would have no qualms shoving her off backwards, but an 11 year old dog? That doesn't seem prudent.

I was able to make her happy the other day by lying on my stomach and cuddling with her. Like so: