Gasping to get a breath, shaking, howling. It’s quite a temper tantrum for this late at night.
Or is it?
Maybe she’s afraid from the thunderstorm and can’t tell me.
Or maybe it’s trauma from her previous life. We heard she was abused.
My husband says maybe she just wants attention. To have someone near her.
It’s like having an infant again. Where’s Super Nanny when you need her?
Our usually adorable rescue dog Eliza has been depriving us of a full night’s sleep these past couple of weeks. It started with the thunderstorms.
She whined and rattled her crate so loudly around midnight that I came down to sit with her until the pink blobs on the radar disappeared. My sleep schedule did, too.
Or did it start with the eclipse? The timing was very close, and my memory isn’t running right with this watered down repose. Have you read what losing sleep will do to you? Scary stuff!
The eclipse! That puts a different spin on things. Maybe she’s having some instinctive reaction relative to the hundred-year occurrence of a total solar eclipse. Like the celebration needs to go on and on! Hang this nighttime sleep thing! We’ll party in the dark, she’s thinking.
Come to think of it, my friend’s dog has been acting the same way. Maybe it’s a doggie coup- they’ve decided to rule the world and they’re starting one household at a time.
This could be their nefarious aim: Wear down the owners, so they’ll give us whatever we want. We’ll start by behaving only for treats— but only the really good stuff, not just the usual kibble held in their hands to trick us, and we won’t stop until we’ve made our way into their beds and our owners are taking up space on the couch. Once we’re in their beds, we’ve got access to tv and phones recharging on the nightstand. We can watch and order anything we want, anytime we want! They’ll be zombies.
Tell me it’s not true!
And it’s not THAT bad yet. She hasn’t howled her way into our bed. But I am writing this on my phone as I lie on the couch watching her stretched out on the family room floor with her crate door wide open.
Who’s in charge here, I ask you?
Anyone seen any pigs in uniforms or playing poker lately?
So tonight was supposed to be different. Truly, it was.
I prepared her for bedtime using our usual routine, along with some minor but promising additions based on Facebook friends’ advice: brief walk circling the back yard to potty as hubby heads upstairs. Feet wiped, pats and rubs with sweet words, and the television turned off. I suit her up in her ThunderShirt, toss a few treats AND an herbal sleep enhancer into the cage, and say calmly but with authority, “Crate, girl.”
She runs right in and circles around, sniffing for the goodies. I close the crate door and secure it. She turns around to give me a look.
I gently close the shutter louvers, turn off only one of the two lights, so any possible lightning will be less noticeable— yes, I know there’s none on the radar, but I’m trying to be thorough and consistent here. Then I tune the old Bose to easy listening station and adjust the volume to 36.
And upstairs I go.
A pretty solid routine if I do say so, and we’re consistent!
Well, unless Jerry takes a turn, but still the events are basically the same.
No sooner than I’d brushed my teeth, we heard the wire crate rattling.
“Give her time,” my husband says, rolling over.
So I lie there and read.
She whines. Then she yips. Then she barks. And barks.
I’m watching the clock. And praying the neighbors don’t hear her.
Jerry gets up and heads to the bathroom.
He comes back and we talk about options.
We can wait her out- maybe. “But what if she’s stressed out? That seems cruel.”
We could bring her crate upstairs- okay, but what would we do if she keeps barking in our room? “She’s never going to sleep in our bed!” he says.
“I can go back down with her. To comfort her,” I say. He rolls his eyes.
Then we both realize it’s quiet. Have we done it? Is she really going to sleep through the night? Maybe she just needed to get it all out of her system. And she did!
Fully awake now, Jerry heads to the spare room to read. I turn over, adjust my covers, and visualize petting her and calming her. A little reinforcement can’t hurt, right?
Five minutes later, I hear a jet. And then another. What? Are we directly under some FAA interstate flight path? How did I not know this?
Eliza must’ve heard them, too. She barks and yips. She howls and rattles her cage.
Jerry comes back to bed. “Give her time.”
And she settles. Just like a baby might learn to comfort itself. Right?
I think so. But like the mother of a newborn, my mind races. Was that her crate rattling? Is she downstairs panting so heavily, like she was last night? What if she tears up her blanket, like she did the pad in the crate? She might choke.
Do I go downstairs? Should I let her out? I don’t know.
One thing I do know: I’ll just fret about it if I stay here.
I throw back the covers and grab my robe. Jerry groans and rolls over.
And here I lie, writing this post while stretched out on the couch in our dark family room, while Eliza snoozes quietly outside her open crate and I count the jets passing over.
I proofread the tiny text, and then Eliza wakes up. She shakes herself, rattling her name tag and heads into her crate.
Are ya kidding me?
Tomorrow’s gonna be another long day. And thunderstorms are in the forecast.
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