The first real day

Its good to feel needed again. I got up this morning and I had purpose! I couldn't waste time or dawdle, I had things to do! I was needed!

Dogger and I went for our first pre-dawn walk in a month and we came through it like champs. Dog did not want his breakfast, but I lay the blame on that at the  feet of the sudden absence  of my fathers' special just-for-the-dog bacon breakfasts. He ended up eating all of his bacon free kibble, but it took him all morning and he was unhappy about it. Reality doesn't intrude often into the life of a pampered house pet, but when it does, its traumatic and unexpected.

Today was also the first day in a month that he spent any appreciable time by himself. We had to inconvenience ourselves frequently on vacation to make sure he was always supervised because last summer we trusted him to be able to hold it together and we got burned. Learning from our spectacularly destructive failures last summer, this summer he had one-on-one all the time and there was always someone watching him. I was afraid that this would make for  a difficult transition for him to go back to having alone time, but he seemed okay.

Whenever I tuned into Dog Spy, he was sprawled out on the futon, but he was awake and alert, a couple of times he was clearly sound asleep, but the day was punctuated with more periods of wakefulness than he normally experiences. However, he didn't seem particularly anxious or upset during these times,  he was just "not asleep".

I am choosing to see this as a positive change and maybe as a sign of growth for him. It wouldn't hurt him to spend more time alert and playing with his toys or watching TV. Normally, he sleeps a lot, like all day. Not that this is a bad thing, a sleeping dog isn't pacing wildly or clearly anxious and unhappy, but being conscience at least off and on over the course of the day isn't a bad thing either.

It felt really good to have my routine back. I didn't realize how much I missed it or how easy it was to just fall back into it or how comfortable it was. I'll be completely over it in a  few weeks but for right now, it made me feel like I had really come home.