"Get A Dog"

“Get a dog.”

That’s the snide, world-weary comment I’ve gotten from more than one woman friend when I moan about not having a warm body in bed with me.  “It’s not just the sex,” I try to explain during those few times when I actually talk to anyone about men, sex, and men and sex, “it’s sleeping with someone.  Sometimes I just want to take a nap with the right man.  I just want to lean on him and feel his warmth, you know?”  

“Get a dog!”  

So I’m sitting here on another one of those gray, depressing days, with Jessie and George.  Rottweiller and Beagle.  My accidental pets, now my little family.  Both snoozing with me on the sofa.  George snores, loudly.  And at night, in bed, I sandwich myself between them and feel them breathe, and feel their warmth, and let them stretch and kick me in the back.  George does this more than Jessie does. George, beagle, stretches and then holds the stretch, so his stiff-armed paws poke me in the back, until he sighs and relaxes back into his doggie dream.  With Jessie it’s a little tremble in her back paws and a quiet growl while she’s in her canine REM phase.  I love to watch them sleep.  And between Jessie’s 86 pounds and George’s (I think he’s about 29), they weigh about as much as that Armenian triathelete.  And they’re much more comforting than he was.  A little conversation, couple of kisses, some thrusts, a groan, and he’d fall asleep.  And I, to be polite, would watch the clock for about 45 minutes so as not to jump up immediately and flee the scene.

"Get a dog."

I did. And they helped.