Dogs and Couch Lust

I imagine most of you come home from a long day of work and are able to plop into a big comfy couch for some relaxing.  Sounds nice. Have a glass of wine, a fuzzy blanket, and cozy up for a movie. Not in this household.

In our last apartment, we had a futon instead of a couch because no couch could have fit through the hallway into our home. The futon was perpetually covered in dog hair because we never trained Spencer to stay off it. So I'd have to change into my pajamas if I wanted to sit on it, so as to not ruin my clothing. Looking back, the situation wasn't so bad. In fact I'd love to go back to those relatively peaceful one-dog days. But futons are not especially comfy; it still did not fill my void for a soft place to crash.


Then we got the puppy and moved into a new apartment. We could definitely fit a couch in here. However, it would be a serious waste of money because the puppy is a serious force of destruction. Back before Milo was housebroken, he had the habit of peeing on the futon every now and then. Okay, we thought, we'll get a new mattress and cover it with a plastic mattress protector and cover THAT with a sheet so that the mattress itself doesn't get ruined and we can just swap out the dog-haired sheet for a new clean sheet every now and then. Sounds like a genius plan right?


Well we went through three mattress protectors - the dogs tore through each one while we were at work. They also tore through the sheets and started chewing holes in the foam mattress. Oh how Milo loves foam.


Here's what we've worked out now: we keep the mattress itself stored away in a closed room most of the time and only put it out when we have company or want to watch a movie with the full HDTV-huge-speakers experience instead of the laptop-on-the-bed experience. I have yet to patch the holes in it. Our living room is dominated by the empty futon frame.

Funny thing is, Spencer is so in love with lounging at an elevated height, he now uses the coffeetable as his "couch." What does he think he is, a mountain goat?



Of course, when the mattress is down and we don't happen to be sitting on it, the dogs go to town. Silly humans, this isn't for you - this is our playground! Spencer was never trained to stay off furniture, so it was impossible to train Milo to stay off too.

As a result, I have some serious couch lust and drool over the comfortable clean lines of your lovely sofas, like Maria's over at Vintage Simple. But sadly I don't see it being possible until I have enough space for a dog-free living room someday. What home features do you lust after despite their impossibility?