Confession time: I was 52 years old when I finally started making my bed every day.

I’ve made stabs at it over the years. When I was in college, I almost always made it when I had a roommate, because you just never knew who might be coming in and out of your room and sitting on the bed while you weren’t there.

But then, when I no longer had a roommate, that sort of slid by the wayside.

Eventually, I switched to using a duvet. I thought this was the solution to my bed making aversion. How hard could it be to shake out a large blanket and spread it over the bed, every day? Apparently, pretty hard. I mean, I could shake it out just before I went to bed, right? What was the point?

Early on in our marriage, Steve and I realized that sharing a blanket between us was virtually impossible. Each of us had our preferred topping: He didn’t like my thick feathered duvet, and I couldn’t stand his thin cotton comforter. Since the blankets had to be divided up anyway, it made no sense to spread them out only to pull them to their separate sides every night.

Then, of course, after he died, I didn’t care about anything. But a few years ago, during one of the speeches that I had to sit through during A’s senior year, one of the tidbits of advice that was dropped was “make your bed every day.” The reasoning behind it was that by starting your day off by accomplishing something, you put yourself in the mindset to go out and conquer the world. Or something like that.

I think it stuck out to me because it was something actionable that everyone in the audience could go home and do immediately, unlike most of the other esoteric advice we give to graduates. Anyway, for a few weeks, I tried to “accomplish” something. And then, reverted back to my old habits.

So, what finally got me to change my ways? A dirty dog. Normally, when the dogs are muddy, I take the time to brush them off, or at the worst, toss them in their outside kennel to dry off for a bit before letting them back in the house. Until one day, I was in a rush and had to leave, so I didn’t want them outside alone. Even though they weren’t dry, I let them in the house and went about my business.

Now, the dogs always come to the door to greet me as soon as they hear the car in the driveway or me coming up the steps. The dogs are also not allowed up on my bed, when I am present, and they’ve hardly ever challenged me on that.

However, coming home, after letting a dirty dog in the house, I discovered that someone had been sleeping in my bed. He was pretty darn stealthy about it, and since I would never have noticed if the covers were messed up, he had probably been getting away with napping there behind my back for a while.

Now, I’m probably a bad dog owner for letting him get away with bad behavior when I’m not around, but if he’s smart enough to stay off the bed when I am around, and leave little to no trace of himself while he’s going it, who am I to argue? One of my dog friends suggested that he does it because he misses me, and the bed smells like I do.

That being said, I really just got the creepy crawlies because I find ticks on the dogs all the time and just couldn’t continue comfortably sleeping right on the sheet where he’d been laying. Now, every morning, I straighten my blankets, fluff my pillows, and throw an old comforter over the whole thing. At night, that comforter goes to the bottom of the bed, and I slip into a (hopefully) tick free bed.

The weird thing is that thanks to my handy dandy sleep tracker, I’ve noticed that since I’ve been doing this, my sleep pattern has improved significantly. At first I thought it was just a coincidence, but I’ve left the bed messy a few times to experiment, and it takes a lot longer to fall asleep on those nights when I have to untangle the covers before I can get into them.

Whatever the reason and whatever the consequences, I’m glad I have finally managed to make this a habit. I guess you’re never too old for a dog to teach you new tricks.

Liz Pinkey’s column appears on Saturdays in the Times News