Have you ever had a down day only to be uplifted by a shedding, smelly, oversized lapdog?

I have a lovely dog who is a doormat with children, fierce with strangers, steals cookies on a regular basis and sheds like you would not believe.  His name is Toffee and he is a beautiful “Mini Lab”.  He is a cross between a Sheltie and a Golden Lab and is not quite that mini.  He has short golden hair, looks sleek in his middle age (10+ years old), and does not look puffy like a dog who looks like a prolific shedder.  Instead, he is an insidious shedder.

I can’t count the number of friends who have come over to visit and left our house with bits of Toffee on them.  As a golden haired dog, his hair is not immediately visible on our light coloured couches and even though I vacuum everyday – I mean everyday, I still have friends who leave our house with harrier backsides than when they arrived.  To make matters worse and this is the insidious part, Toffee is a sneaky couch sleeper.  He has his special bed in the kitchen, next to the stove.  I vacuum his bed everyday.  I have even placed the bed atop of firm and comfortable foam puzzle pieces, those that parents put in their children’s bedrooms to ensure barefoot comfort.  Yet even as comfortable as Toffee’s bed may be, he still prefers to sleep on the couch.

At night, he docilely goes to his bed, flops down and I dutifully close the sliding kitchen door for him.  About an hour later, I will hear the scratch, scratch, scratch of Toffee’s nails softly trying to open the sliding door.  When the door opens, he will slink into the living room and lie on the carpet for a few minutes and wait.  After a few minutes, he will get up and move to the couch, a brocade fabric covered, antique 4-seater sofa with a tasteful light coloured floral pattern and wait.  After a few minutes of immobility, he will get up on the sofa, turn two circles and snuggle down to sleep.  He is back on his bed in a flash if he hears anyone coming down the stairs but the warmth of his misdeed remains with the couch for many minutes after his departure.  Due to the pattern of the sofa fabric, Toffee’s hair is not immediately visible.  The brocade fabric inhales the hair and only releases it when someone is sitting on the couch thereby the insidious nature of Toffee’s genius.

When Toffee was a puppy, he shed less and was more than welcome upstairs.  We had to confine him to the main floor of the house after his shedding became out of hand.  However, as a puppy, the puppy of two wily children who preferred to have the dog sleep with them…. Toffee learned to climb the ladder of a loft bed, to burrow under the duvet and remain immobile and how to hide under beds, so the fact that he is a secret couch sleeper does not comes as a surprise.  What is surprising is how much hair that dog sheds.  I am now on my second Dyson vacuum – the purple animal kind, and I have to move on to a third one shortly.

Despite the uber inconvenience of having a dog that sheds like a monster, Toffee is also playful, dopey and loveable.  He knows when to put his head in your lap and swat you until you pat him, he knows when to knock little kids over with his tail, he knows when to lick the crumbs off of my youngest nephew’s face and when and how to artfully steal cookies.  Most importantly, he knows when you need a little laugh, a little pick me up, and he delivers.

Never underestimate the positive power of a furry, friendly dog.