A Lazy Dog's Guide to Loafing

By Special Guest Blogger, Bilbo Baggins!

Life is hard when you're a domestic dog—so much human food to beg for, so many balls to chase, so many suspicious characters to bark at! Sometimes it's enough to make you just want to lie down and nap! But how?

Don't worry, our special guest blogger and expert on being a dog, Bilbo Baggins, has your hindquarters! With his vast experience in strategic lounging, he will guide you through a compendium of possible poses and get you well on your way to Doggy Dreamland!

A question I get from a lot of dogs is, “When I get the urge to loaf around, where should I do it?” 

The answer is easy: Any time your human puts something on the floor, that is an invitation for you to sit down on it. Outfits she has laid out for the next day and her yoga mat are the best of the best, but don’t overlook the less cushy objects either. Even the smallest shopping bag is a gift from your human and must be sat upon! 

Empty cardboard boxes don’t sound very comfortable, but what the human wants, the human gets! She will always take a photo of you when you sit in a box, so that’s how you know you’ve been a good boy!

If you haven’t tried sitting in the suitcase, you really must! This opportunity only comes around once in a while (usually when the human is planning to abandon you!), so act quickly when you see it! Your goal is to get your fur all over the human’s possessions so she doesn’t forget about you while she’s gone.

If the object you are lying on is too hard and flat for your liking, you might want to employ a trick I learned from my ancestors. Simply poke and pull at it with your paws and turn around a couple of times until it is no longer flat. You will have a bed of perfectly arranged lumps in no time! Definite improvement!

There’s one thing you shouldn't ever bother lying down on, though: your dog bed. Basically, if it’s got the word “dog” in it, you don’t want it! Freshly folded laundry is a better choice every time!

For some reason, my human doesn’t like me to sit on the couch (she says it has something to do with my tendency to puke on it! As if!) If your human is the same way and does mean things like put metal grates on the couch so you can’t sit on it even if she’s not looking and there’s absolutely zero chance that you’re going to barf up that combination of grass and dust bunnies you ate earlier, you can at least let her know how you feel by sleeping mournfully as close to the couch as you can possibly get. Much sad!

 

Pro Tip: One of my favorite places to get some shuteye is behind the toilet. My human thinks that’s because it’s a nice cool spot in the dog days of summer, but really I’m just trying to make her feel sorry for not letting me on the couch. Someday she’ll catch on!

 

In case you, too, are trying to guilt your human into sharing her couch with you, and the toilet trick just isn’t reaching her, try pressing your face into the leg of a chair. This sends a sure message of pitiful imprisonment. It’s a metaphor any human should understand!...except mine. I’ll keep working on her.

My friends, I am a dog of few words (in fact, I have said zero in my entire life!), but when it comes to loafing, I've barely gotten started! My human says she knows a thing or two about blogging, and that I'd better split this into two posts. So just steady... steady... 

And come! (back tomorrow, when I'll have another helpful guide to my favorite kind of loafing of all!)