It’s late. The wee hours of the morning surround me. I can’t sleep because FPL has four honking trucks with strobe lights flashing along my street. The main problem seems to be at the house across the street from me. For once, I have electricity when they don’t. When I peek out from the vertical blinds in my bedroom, I’m startled by a huge globe of white light that hovers in the darkness just in the trees behind that house.
This is not her crate, but she will go in this BC crate on her own to rest. Does that look comfortable?
For close to an hour, I try to sleep. I take care of the disco lights outside by covering my eyes with a blanket, but that doesn’t stop the dogs barking at the men yelling at each other from their monstrous trucks. I finally give in and let the barking bed hog out of her crate.
She immediately heads for my bed and I immediately tell her, “No way! You are to stay off my bed. There are a lot of places for you to sleep that are not my bed. Find one.” Then I tuck myself in.
Here’s the impressive thing. This Dobie, she normally jumps on the bed, twirls around and plops down hard, like a 60-pound bag of dog kibble. But she also has a stealth mode, and during times like these, when I don’t want her on my bed, she switches to her stealth mode. She knows what she’s doing. This takes planning, and it’s fascinating.
She waits till she thinks I’m sleeping, and usually I am because I wake up and find her on the bed next to me. But I’ve gone through her routine when I’m awake. The first thing that happens is a soft touch. It’s one of the front paws slipping onto the far corner of the bed by my feet. Then the second front paw comes up. The back legs follow, but not a jump. She steps onto the bed. I hear it all and feel the movements. They are slow and calculating. Nothing in these maneuvers happens hastily.
When all four paws are on the corner of the bed, she stalks out a spot and step by careful step navigates to her targeted location. Once there, I can see her, but I stay quiet. This is entertainment. This is when dogs don’t think you see them being massively more intelligent than society and professors who study this stuff give them credit for.
The Dobie dog then slowly shifts her body down to the spot she has been coveting since her release from that crate. This, too, happens methodically. Section after section of her body lowers into position until she has melded with the bed. Her finishing touch is when she lays her head across some part of me. She sighs and her work is done. For this night.
And FPL was on the job for a couple more hours last night, making it very difficult to get a good sleep. The bed hog had her comfy spot, and that lulled her to sleep. But there was always another dog to pick up the slack and bark for her when the men engaged in another of their shouting conversations. This invariably happened just as I drifted off to sleep. So here’s to the chance of a good night’s sleep tonight along with acknowledgment and appreciation of the intelligent mind and plotting capabilities of the dog!
I arrived at work on time this morning, 30 minutes early. Well, actually, 40 minutes early if you figure I would be at least 10 minutes late normally. (This was so I could leave 30 minutes early to take a novice agility class with my Aussie.) But it was hard! Lucky for me between the teacher and me, we decided that my Aussie needs some basic work on recalls and stays, so he is going to sit this one out. It wasn’t a hard decision at all, actually. He didn’t know I existed out there in new territory. Everything was more interesting than da mama. Too bad for him, but good for everyone else involved. My Dobie will be going on another day and it will be at a decent time so I don’t have to ask for special permission to leave work early every week. In a way, what a relief!
