I began my last column talking about our dog, Riley, and how he’s cute.
He is cute. Very, very cute…
For the most part, having him sleep in our bed with my husband and me is not bad. Because, well, we’re asleep.
And if we’re both in a deep sleep, Riley could have a party, play a banjo, or clap cymbals over our heads, and we wouldn’t even know it.
Um, scratch that. I would certainly know if my dog began to play a banjo…
But I digress…
The nightly ritual begins with my husband asking Riley if he wants a treat.
Well, of course he wants a treat! He always wants a treat! He’s a dog! He would eat treats until he passed out.
But, again, I digress…
He gets one little treat downstairs. Riley then goes running to the top of our upstairs steps. This is when he gets his second treat. Then, he runs into our bedroom, where he gets his third and final treat of the day.
Riley then jumps on the bed and lays down at the bottom. At some point, he will get disgusted for one reason or another—like I’ve asked him to move because he’s lying on my feet—and he jumps down. He then does what we call “maneuvers” and crawls like a soldier underneath our bed.
This is when the flatulence begins. Yes, if our dog gets mad, he sometimes decides to stink up the room.
During the night, Riley jumps back up on the bed and makes himself comfortable. For the most part, Brad and I sleep right through it. But on occasion, we will wake up.
Like when he decides that I should sleep with my legs hanging off the side of the bed so that he can have more room.
Or when he comes to the top of the bed and plops his head on Brad’s pillow. Thus putting his butt directly in my face.
Or when he begins to snore—loudly.
We also wake up if he has to go outside in the middle of the night. He’s not like our dog Snoopy was, though. If Riley needs to go out, he lets us know by pacing back and forth across the room.
The problem is that it’s more easy to block out a little dog pacing than it is if he, say, barked or something.
In fact, this is one instance in which barking would be a welcome sleep interruption. If he just barked, we could get up (and when I say “we,” I mean my husband) and let him out.
But the pacing is kind of like when your alarm goes off and you hit the “snooze” button—it wakes you up for an instant, but then you end up dozing back off.
See, so the problem is that we will be in and out of sleep for God knows how long until one of us wakes up enough to either take him out or tell the other person to take him out (I’ll let you guess who is who).
If that doesn’t work, Riley then does “The Stare.” He will stare at Brad until he actually wakes him up.
But in the morning, Riley is like a teenager–it takes him forever to get moving.
When we wake up in the morning, he comes to the top of the bed and puts his head on Brad’s pillow. At first, we thought that this meant he wanted to go out. It doesn’t.
It means that he wants to put his head on a pillow. Heck, he probably wants his own little pillow.
Then he stretches multiple times. We both get out of bed, but Riley stays there. If someone goes downstairs, he will come down…and then promptly jump on the couch and go back to sleep.
After all that nighttime pacing, he must need the rest.
Michele Wojciechowski, when she’s not nodding off at her desk due to a lack of sleep (thanks, Riley!), writes Wojo’s World® from Baltimore.
She’s also the author of the award-winning humor 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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