The Organic Alarm Clocks

When you live in a household full of dogs, you learn their body language real quick. Or you establish firm rules and schedules. For instance, the big girls (Penny Bella Jenna) sleep in the garage every night, they are in by dark and out pretty much first thing in the morning. They know they have some place warm and dry to sleep and they know that doing their business in there is a No-No, so they wait till we let them out. Admittedly it is always interesting trying to train a new pup that they have to wait till they hit the lawn in the yard to commence their duties, so accidents are always forgiven.

As for the muffins who sleep inside, we listen for the telltales collar jingle in the morning. Archie is usually the one to run around the bed a few dozen times, licking what ever flesh colored appendage he can reach to get us up. The Muffins usually always have to wait for me to get up and head downstairs to go out. It is slightly endearing that I am so integral to their physical needs, annoying as hell when I want to sleep in and Casey is all ready at the bottom of the stairs calling for them to go out and they won't leave the bedroom. But mostly they wait till we are up, regardless of the time. Mostly.

Add in temporary Dog #6, Sammy. The dog who only goes two times a day according to my Dad, and who really goes in actuality more like 4 times a day and that doesn't count #1's. He usually ignores the rules in our house, so much so that the first couple days of his visits are usually full of NoSammys! and plenty of crate time. We completely avoid the nighttime accidents by crating him and then he lets us know when he is going to burst with a very annoying whine. But it works until somebody other then us decides to train him.

But this morning at 6:45 am, on the one morning that I had planned on sleeping in till 8:00am, we were woken up by the sounds of screaming. First thinking it was Alex, Casey dashed into his room to still find Bugman lumped under his down comforter. Turns out Archie was having a nightmare, downstairs, and was howling/screaming in his sleep. When he has done this in the past it is usually pitch black and he is laying in bed with us. We always can get him to stop within the first moment because he is right there at our legs. But today he was howling away downstairs, which was suspicious, till he woke himself up. Then he made his way upstairs quick as can be and trembled in between Casey and I until I couldn't stand the Sammy whines any more and I started the Potty Time process. Which was about 2 minutes later.

I must say in their many legged defence, that dogs are easy peasy if rules are established early on. But it never fails that there is some unexpected glitch on the morning when I want to sleep in.