She Said

So, we have this adorably cute dog named Rusty who currently thinks he is our child. He's pretty much a stinker. He likes to sleep on the bed with us and be in the middle of everything we're doing and be in our laps at all time. This is normally not a big deal because I like to cuddle and he fills my cuddle quotient; however, we figure with the baby coming, we should start weening him off of some things. He is a small dog, but he's white and sheds like 50 dogs worth of hair every day! We decided that when the baby comes he should just be a downstairs dog so that we don't have to deal with the hair upstairs in our room or the baby's room. This was supposed to be a gradual process, but Rusty got into trouble. He started rolling in some unpleasant things outside and we were giving him baths like everyday. At that point we decided to go ahead and make him stay downstairs cold turkey so we put the gate at the bottom of the stairs. The first night, he just figured he was in trouble so he was fine, although very pouty. The next few nights though, he started standing at the bottom of the stairs and whining ALL NIGHT LONG. This didn't last long...a few nights later he was back in bed with us. When we came home from my parents house from Thanksgiving we decided to try again, this time slowly. We brought his pillow up and put it by our bed. That is where he has been for the last few nights and I think he's starting to get the idea that he isn't allowed on the bed. I guess we have 7 more months to get him downstairs...we'll see how it goes!