Peaceful Protest

My dog is a willful girl. Unfortunately, she is big enough that her will sometimes makes our will difficult. Last night I told Steven to take Sadie down to bed with him (her dog crate is downstairs by the boys bedrooms). He got her excited to play with him by squeezing her favorite squeaky toy and she began to go down the steps. As she went, I put the doggy gate (or for clarification purposes, a baby gate) at the top of the stairs - she does sometimes turn around and run back up past the boys when she really does not want to go to bed. Now, these steps have 2 landings that each make a 90 degree turn, and soon she was back at the top landing, looking at me and the gate with those puppy dog eyes of hers. First she tried to "cutify" me into letting her come back up - No Way was she going down by Steven and get put into her crate! After several minutes of that I heard her plop down, so I went to look and of course she takes up the whole landing, laying sprawled out with her head facing down in order to keep an eye out for any pesky boys who intend her to go to bed! She just looked so pitiful. Steve came to get her, but she was refusing to budge. Fine, Steve, (said I) just leave her and go down to get your shower and get ready for bed. She will eventually come down to see what you are doing and then you can put her in her crate. 2 hours later, Mike and Pete came home from the rental house. Sadie was still keeping up her peaceful protest of bedtime on the landing. One thing about those solitary shows of will, they are lonely. As soon as Pete went down, she willingly followed and was ready for the security of her bed.