Consumerism Reports: The $279 Weighted Blanket for Little Baby Bears
It's OK for baby dogs too
This is a recurring series about all my devices. I’d like to clarify that it is NOT a tech column — it’s about spending money to speed up self-transformation, and then buying more stuff when that doesn’t work. And so I have acquired an endless array of devices: from products that promise to make my face look more triangular and the skin around my eyes less purple to ones that shrink specific parts of my salt-logged body. Do any of them work? Previously: the $499 Sweat Bag for Virtuous Women
Growing up, a nickname of mine was Bear Bear. It’s a fine nickname, though not flashy. Simply, my given name is Claire, which mutated to Claire Bear, which reconstructed itself to Bear Bear. A somewhat more confounding development in my adult life is that I find myself calling my dog Mars by the nickname of Bear Bear, too. He looks a little bit like a grizzly cub, sure, but Bear Bear slips out of my mouth naturally in the way “hon” or “baby” might. Bear Bear is comfort.
Bear Bear and Bear Bear, the brothers two, have had a stressful month, though the reasons are pedestrian. As a remedy, together we adopted our own kind of Bear Bear, or more formally speaking a $269 Bearaby 15 Pound Tree Napper cooling weighted blanket. Unlike other weighted blankets, quilted stiffly and filled with hard little beads, the Bearaby is rendered in the style of a chunky sweater. It’s breathable, and if you like, you can stick each of your toes through gaps in the Tencel Lyocell knitting, for optimum cooling. Nobody’s stopping you from sticking a leg or a paw out from under it either.
Literally me
I made sure it was safe for dogs. The Bearaby website was sort of harsh when explaining common signs of anxiety in pets in their blog, but yes, it’s totally OK.
Bearaby’s gentle advice to pet owners with anxiety
The Bearaby, like other weighted blankets, claims to use its gentle, dispersed pressure to release serotonin and calm fidgety restless sleepers – like a hug, or a snuggle from a loved one. I’m not much of a snuggler, unless it’s with my dog, but he’s not much of a snuggler, especially with me. But we get under there together, and truly, it’s like a third Bear Bear, a Papa Bear if you will, is soothing us into slumber.
“Bear Bear time,” I tell the dog each night around 10 p.m., and tuck us both under its gentle heft. He loves it! I look at my phone until midnight.
