It’s time for a classic Wojo’s World. Enjoy this popular column from a couple of years ago.
I’m a morning person.
I’m not exactly sure when this happened because I have clear memories of my Mom having to do everything short of setting off a bomb in my room to get me up when I was in high school.
Now, I tend to wake up between 5 and 5:30…
Yes, that’s A.M.
My husband has become a morning person as well.
But there is one family member who doesn’t get this part of the program. He sleeps in as often and as late as he can. He complains when we try to wake him up. And we hear him pacing many times in the middle of the night.
He’s our dog, Riley.
Even though he’s been with us for a few years now, I’m still stunned that Riley doesn’t want to get up in the morning. He’s the only dog I’ve ever had who has done this.
Our last dog, who will go by the pseudonym Snoopy, got up bright and early—mainly because he had to go out and never learned to master opening the back door on his own. It used to drive us crazy on the weekends because Snoopy would come up to the top of the bed, plop his head on my husband’s pillow, and, if my husband pretended to be asleep, even lick him in the face to wake him up.
This is why we could never sleep in on the weekends.
We joked about constructing a chute from our bedroom window, akin to a giant sliding board, so that we could just get up, and let Snoopy slide right down into the yard to do his business.
But we knew this plan was destined to fail: he’d have no way to get back up to our room and one of us—and when I say “one of us,” I mean my husband—would have to go down and get him anyway.
We had Snoopy for many years before he passed. And you kind of get used to how things in your house work. So when Riley came along, we were in for quite the surprise.
Riley is much like a teenager—he doesn’t want to wake up early. When he does wake up, he literally moans and groans. He yawns. Then, he plops back down on the bed. He will come up in the morning like Snoopy did and plop down on my husband’s pillow. But it’s not because he wants to get up.
Oh no…he has no desire to be counted among the awake and alive yet.
He just wants to rest his head on a pillow.
If he weren’t so darn cute, this would really tick us off.
Until the early afternoon, Riley spends his time taking naps—as many as possible. Forget about “cat naps”; I think my dog has them all beat.
At precisely 8 p.m. each evening (seriously—you could set your watch by our pup), Riley begins running around the living room because he wants to play.
The problem is that with my husband and me being the aforementioned early birds, we’re really tired at this time.
That doesn’t matter to Riley. He will bring my husband one toy. Then another. Then another. He keeps it up until he wears us both down, and my husband finally surrenders. “Okay, okay! We’ll play,” he says.
And they do…until one of them completely tires out.
Sometimes it’s actually Riley.
One thing I haven’t yet told you about Riley is that being a night owl-dog, he then loves to get up in the middle of the night to go out. He won’t just jump on the bed or come up and lick one of us in the face.
No, that would be too easy.
He walks around our bedroom. First, he scratches a lot. Then he yawns a lot. Then he will begin to lick his foot, while making the loudest slurping noises possible.
Don’t worry; he doesn’t have fleas. He’s just doing everything short of hiring a little doggie marching band to wake us up.
One of us will then get up—and when I say “one of us,” I mean my husband—and let him outside.
We’re starting to give that chute a little more thought…
Michele Wojciechowski, when she’s not trying to wake her dog up, writes “Wojo’s World®” from her home office.
She’s also the author of the award-winning book Next Time I Move, They’ll Carry Me Out in a Box. You can connect with Wojo on Facebook or on Twitter.
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