Dog Tired

What execatly does that mean? It’s mid-afternoon on a Saturday and my husband came back from an international trip an hour ago. He went right to bed and is snoring away.

Our dog, who prides herself on her beauty sleep at 80 in human years (nary a wrinkle) begged to go to the bedroom and have me “Otis” her up to the bed to hang out and sleep with him. She sleeps at least 20 hours every day, does not have a job outside the home nor one inside it. She doesn’t even do enough to earn an “allowance” what I would call a treat. How can she be so tired?

I’d go bonkers if I slept 20 hours a day, unless I had a really bad 24-48 hour flu. But for over 11 years she’s done it every day, and at 80 she looks better than we do! She doesn’t have to pay bills or worry about a bad boss or co-worker, and thinks she’s got a pretty good deal around here. She does, and when she’s bad my husband says of this herder “we should have adopted the dumb one” and I threaten to take her back to the shelter where we got her, too young, just spayed at five weeks and sick as can be from hookworms and coccidia. Poor girl.

Empty threats. You should see it when she gets up to the stove to steal a croissant and carries it moustache-style by us and our guests at brunch to sneak to her favorite spot to eat it. I couldn’t even discipline her! We were all laughing too hard, wish I’d gotten a photo of that.

Perhaps entertaining us and her dog and people friends make her tired. They shouldn’t, as we spend brief periods of time and she always gets praise and a treat from someone.

Talking about Dog Tired our old buddy Jake the Golden Retriever who died last year, stayed a weekend with us a couple of years ago. He and Zoe played nicely for about four hours then I didn’t hear him for a minute or so, only hard breathing. He’d locked himself in a bathroom to get a break from Zoe. Now I understand dog tired! It’s dogs being tired FROM Zoe! I get it. Dee