You probably know the drill. You decide to get a pet and decide things are going to be different this time. THIS pet won’t be allowed in certain rooms. THIS pet will be trained not to come into the bedroom. Never again will you have to share your bed with a small creature that somehow takes up 80% of your bed space.
And then you bring them home.
When Catherine Morris’ family adopted their English springer spaniel, a rescue named Spike, nine years ago, her parents decided he would be a “downstairs dog.” Then the inevitable happened.
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“The first night we had him, we closed the stair gate and went to bed,” Morris told The Dodo. “He whined for a couple of minutes before jumping over the gate in the dark and trotting up into my parents’ room and straight up onto the bed! And that’s where he slept from then on.”
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Giving in
Most of us give in. They’re too cute. We get them for companionship after all. It’s also hard to train them to stay away from you for hours.
So Spike lives his life full of daytime play and nighttime snuggles.
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“He loves to snuggle up and tries to push his way under the covers to get as close as possible,” Morris said.
Alas, he’s getting up there in years now that he’s 14.
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Spike has had two strokes, but he’s a survivor. Still, the Morris’ are afraid they could lose him at any time and don’t want him to be alone.
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What goes up must come down
While his second stroke made it hard to stand, much less walk, Spike is a fighter and worked hard to regain his abilities. Alas, the stairs are just too much for him.
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And that means the bedroom where he’s slept with his parents for the last 9 years is no longer accessible to him. Sure, he might try, but it’s better that he doesn’t.
Now, the Morris family has come up with a plan – block off the stairs (just like they did nearly a decade ago to keep him from going up there in the first place), but give him what he needed downstairs.
Dad sleeps downstairs on the sofa bed with elderly dog to keep him company since dog can’t get up the stairs anymore. ❤️ from r/aww
Catherine Morris is away at college for the most part, so it’s mom and dad who take turns sleeping on the pull-out couch with Spike each night so he has someone to snuggle with. Still, when she comes home, she does her duty.
“This new schedule started while I was away at university, so my parents spent alternate nights downstairs with Spike,” she said. “Since I moved back home, I’ve joined the rotation so all in all we get a bit more sleep between the three of us.”
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Father knows best
It appears that Spike’s favorite sleeping companion is dad – the two are inseparable.
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“My dad will also bring Spike his water and food to the sofa and feed him by hand to make sure he gets his medicines and keeps his strength up,” Morris told The Dodo.
While the whole family is committed to making up for Spike’s hard start to life by giving him the most comfortable retirement from his upstairs life.
If you’d like to see more from Spike’s loving home, you can follow him on Instagram at @spikethespringer.
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