The Late Shift

Dogger and I are recovering from our forced march. Dogger is sore, I'm sore. If my two legs are stiff and hateful this morning I can only imagine how her four legs are taking it out on her. Last night she was hobbling around. At one point I heard her whimpering because she couldn't get up off her bed! I had to hold her up by her harness, like a little doggy gate belt and walk her outside so she could pee.

I was hobbling, she was hobbling. We were sad.

And then we both went to bed. For a while. At two something she needed to go out to pee. Fine. I don't know how familiar you are with weather patterns in the southeastern U.S, but Tuesday night? A front came though, a cold front and into this Dogger needed to go out and pee. It was very cold in my nightgown. I was alert enough at two something to remember to turn off the alarm but I was not alert enough to find shoes. I am fairly certain I heard Dogger chortle as she wandered all over the front yard to find the perfect place to pee.

But, I was okay with it. She would have been awake earlier if I hadn't forced her to hike for hours. This was my penance. She did her thing and we went back inside, I locked the door, gave her a cookie, put her back to bed and then I went back to bed - Happy that her feet had recovered enough to wander around the yard that way for so long. I was rewarded by the Kitty curling up against me, purring.

At four something I became aware of another sound. Whimpering. Dogger has only woken me up in the middle of the night a few times, when she was a puppy and when she was very, very ill. The two something pee break didn't worry me be that much because she had slept through her regularly scheduled potty breaks. She woke up, she relived herself and she should have gone back to sleep. End of story.

Now, hours later she was up again. I was having some bad flashbacks of the last time I wandered around in the yard with her in the middle of the night.

At four something I was more alert. I had both glasses and shoes on. While we were out front a cop car zoomed down the street. he didn't seem to notice the woman wandering around her yard in her night gown. Maybe he didn't even see. He was speeding. I thought I looked very odd. Maybe a lot of women around there wander their yards with their dogs in the middle of the night in their nightgowns. I'm usually asleep then.

Dogger didn't want to use the front yard. Dogger wanted to growl at a plastic bag in a neighbors yard. I took this as a good sign. If she felt strong enough to want to throw down with a bag, she couldn't feel that bad. When she was ill, she was pretty single minded about her potty breaks.

We went to to the backyard where she found the perfect spot. although you could tell her joints were hurting her. I thought momentarily about going and propping her up but she took care of business on her own. The she wanted to play. She wanted to play chase and I started to feel significantly less sorry for her.

We went back to bed. Two hours later I was out wandering around the yard again, this time it was for our regularly scheduled trip to the yard. She still seems a little tender, but then so am I. I, like her, feel very tired now - but not so tired that I'm not going to trot her butt outside every hour or so before we both go to bed and stay in bed.