Couching

The first definition of a couch is “a long upholstered piece of furniture for several people to sit on. ” Let me start there, noting the lack of inclusion of the word “dog” in the definition.

I honestly don’t use the couch much when I’m home alone. I’m either working at the kitchen table, sleeping, or using the bathroom. I think I’d be fine in a one-room cabin, like the one I had in Fairbanks, where I was fine, most of the time (except those afternoons waiting for the frozen soup to thaw, or those evenings when I turned the cabin into a sauna, or those wee-hour wake-ups when the stove was out and the soup froze again).

But the kids are home and Katrina’s here and we’ve been couching it. Two nights ago was a bizarre modern family moment. We played “games” but luckily didn’t need the table that the tree is on (to get it out of Cedar’s reach). We didn’t need the table because we played GeoGuessr and TheWikigame on our own individual laptops, parallel playing like a bunch of teenage boys at a sleepover. (Tim and Katie destroyed the elders.)

Cedar, as you might imagine, wanted to join the couch crew. Herein lies my dilemma. I’ve tried to check my old-school instincts that dogs don’t get to be on the couch. I’ve been mulling this since before Katie came home because I’ve sensed my vulnerabilities. Maybe it’s our exceptionally cold winter, but who doesn’t want a dog that cuddles, right? Still, I resist the entitlement. Will she push us off the couch when she wants her favorite spot? What if I someday get nice furniture? (That one’s easy to cross off the list.) What if we go to someone else’s house and she feels entitled to be on their nice furniture?

I decided to take my dilemma to the goddess of dog-raising, my college-friend Jenny. Jenny literally did not waste a word in reply. She sent me only this image:

And so… I was doomed by the time I got the plaintive Katie-eyes. I decided to compromise with the idea proposed by my sister, Joanne, of only allowing the dog to lie on a blanket on the couch. (Joanne’s dog Odin–a master of kicking people off of couches–seems to have a slightly different spin on that routine, but I chose to ignore that data on the assumption that I had a plan.)

Cedar responded quickly to the blanket invitation—by tearing the blanket off of the couch and initiating a game of tug.

And so we’re in limbo. Cedar’s tasted paradise and she wants more of it. Yet when I walk into the room she scoots back to the floor.

The AKC’s Week 20 missive reminds us that dogs don’t generalize well. (This was part of an admonition not to join the TikTok challenge and bark in your dog’s face. Hard as I try, I just can’t think of anything to say in response to that.) But as I was typing just now, Cedar was nowhere in sight, and I got vexed by the silence. Cedar, it turns out, had done a nifty bit of generalizing, and was curled up on the table under the Christmas tree. (She scooted before I could get a photo.)

The second definition of “couch” is to “express (something) in language of a specified style” as in “many false claims are couched in scientific jargon”. So let me express something in a style far less eloquent than Jenny’s. I’m at sea. Where do we go from here? Should Cedar get couch privileges? Maybe it’s time, dear reader, to take a side: Katie-Jenny-Cedar or Ye Olde Curmudgeon?