This week my husband was off on some secret law enforcement "share your ideas" meetings in Washington D.C. and the girls and I were left on dog duty. Dog duty in this house is when Tom gets up in the early morning before work to poop and walk the dog and when he arrives home in the late evening to generally do the same. The dog is very use to this routine of spending quality time with his master and if I should happen to awaken early on a weekend morning the dog refuses to even come outside with me. In fact he won't even leave our bedroom and usually jumps up on our bed to lie down in the spot I have just vacated to wait for his master to awaken. I have come to enjoy this end of dog ownership as the rest of the time dog duty falls to me. If the dog needs to go outside at anytime during the day or evening he doesn't ring a bell, he pokes me. It doesn't matter if Tom is at home at this time either. The dog still pokes me. But in early morning the dog will jump up on the bed and paw at Tom to let him know he has overslept and their time together is dwindling.
Because the weather right now is summer weather, aka hot enough to fry an egg on the sidewalk, Tom has been getting up before six to take the pooch for his morning run. My summer, especially the latter part of it, has been spent staying up until the wee hours of the next day and then sleeping until it is hot enough to have that egg for brunch. Taking over Tom dog duty meant readjusting my sleep schedule, and I was none too happy about this as I'm not a morning person. But I figured since school started next week it would be a good precursor to starting that schedule, and so I set my alarm for 6:30 to walk the dog. I was taking this shift because I didn't want the girls out walking the dog by themselves that early.
The first evening I did not get to bed at a reasonable time and when the alarm sounded I wanted to ignore it and roll over, but I was determined to show my family that this dog duty nonsense was doable and so I got up, dressed, and headed out into the pre-dawn darkness with the dog. We walked, chatted with all the neighbors and dogs that usually meet up with Tom and Elliot at that time, and he did his business and seemed quite content. I managed to stay up and alert the entire day, but again did not get to bed at a reasonable time, and thus didn't make it out of bed the second day until 6:45.
I slowly rolled out of bed and got ready, grumbling some under my breath about the stupid school system that forced parents to get their children to school at unreasonable times as I realized that by this time next week Madison will already be at school. Elliot and I walked outside to find the skies black and the clouds rumbling. As we headed down the street lightning began flashing and the dog quickly did his business and then turned around letting me know he had no intention of continuing his walk in these type of conditions. I came inside and waited for two hours while the thunder and lightning continued without any rain. Somewhere in those two hours I tried to get the dog to go for a walk, but he sat his butt down in the driveway and pulled at the leash in the opposite direction saying, "You want to kill yourself go ahead, but leave me out of this." I couldn't go back to bed as it was the day of the Foot God and so I just tried to make do. Madison too was up as she was working at readying her body for next week and so we read the paper and played some on our Ipads. At 8:45 the rain came and I gave up walking the dog. I went back to bed for 45 minutes.
The third day I set my alarm for 7:00, but somewhere, somehow it got reset to 7:30. I panicked and jumped out of bed apologizing to the dog who was in my bathroom asleep. Asleep? Quietly I snuck back into bed and joined him in his slumber. He woke me at sometime after 8:00 and we were out the door at 8:20 where we both suffered through the short version of his normal walk. We returned home drenched in sweat and agreed that that time was no time to be walking. Later that day I took an hour nap.
The last day it was almost nine before we made it out the door. Since Tom's departure the dog kept waking at all hours of the night howling. I would wake wondering if a burglar was breaking in and then lie in bed annoyed at his awakening me for nothing. Somewhere in the night he would come into our bathroom to sleep and whimper and make awful groaning noises. Once it was before six and I jumped out of bed thinking he was dying only to find him sound asleep having some sort of awful dream. By the time any alarm sounded that last day he and I were over that time and we both rolled over and went back to sleep. We paid for that miserable walk.
Last night the master returned, but I could hardly keep my eyes open to hear his trip stories. I went to bed before anyone and had a great night sleep for the first time since he left. I didn't set any alarms and didn't worry about walking the dog, but when he whined pitifully after 8:00 this morning I thought I should get up and walk him one last time and let Tom sleep. He just looked at me and then looked at Tom and telepathically told me, "My time with you is over. Go back to bed." So I did.
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