Sleep is overrated

Morning, you sleepyheads… Actually I am pretty lucky to decide rather flexibly if I work at home or in the office. Today was one of the rare occasions I definitely had to get to the office and this was exactly the day I whished I could sleep in because our furry drama queen chose the night for her nightly drama…

Sleep deprivation is a way of torture and people with babies or toddlers know exactly what I'm talking about. Hubby's days of looking after toddlers are long gone but our home is completed by two four-legged family members who we love dearly. Heinrich, a French bulldog who turned 7 in October and Else (aka The Queen), an English bulldog girl at the proud age of 11 (note: average life span of an EB is between 8 and 10 years). Of course she is sometimes indisposed due to old age, she is mostly blind on her right eye (no political statement!), she doesn't hear very well, but there may be different reasons for that :-), she suffers from arthritis in both front legs and thanks to a rapidly approaching biker who startled her from behind she sidestepped which resulted in a slightly damaged cruciate ligament 3 years ago. Nevertheless she isn't very bothered, has a great sense of humor, demands her daily treats very charmingly, and if she isn't in the mood for walkies she just makes a u-turn and heads straight home. Her daily naps sum up to 22 hours, I guess, which is totally fine. Sometimes she has to relieve herself during the night (mostly between 1 and 2 am) and we can live with that, too, but...

Don't know if she didn't respond well to a treat or drank from a puddle she was not supposed to or whatever. Fact is, even after our afternoon walkie she signaled my pretty often that I should open the door to the backyard because she had serious business to do. That was kind of odd, but stomach bugs do happen. But when I let her out at 10 pm for the last time - as usual - to go to bed (hubby was in Qatar at that time) she wanted me to open the door again just half an hour later. She really took her time while I waited for her patiently in my nightie and without socks to finish what she had to do. Once inside, she instantly had to go out again and didn't come back for ages. We repeated that procedure 4 or 5 times and I finally decided to crash on the couch - nearer to the backyard door. In general, I am no helicopter dog mom (well, hubby might disagree), but in this situation all possible scenarios went through my mind from carrot soup to emergency vet clinic. Thank god her trips into the wilderness shortened and at 2 am she finally fell asleep. "Dances with wolves" or better "walks with dogs" was very relieved. 

Well... until 5:30 am when I woke up to the well-known gurgling sounds of a little black dog throwing up next to my bed! Heinrich has a sensitive stomach and is prone to colds since he had a very bad flu when he was a little puppy which may lead to barfing sometimes. He didn't care but I did and started cleaning in the wee hours of the morning.

Fortunately I love them to the moon and back!

After a hot shower and a mini-walkie life is better and both dogs are doing fine.  Maybe I put chicken into their bowls instead of carrot soup, and then we watch a nice long movie with Kevin Costner…