Zeldie the Canine Alarm Clock

I read once that dogs do not understand or know time. I would disagree. In July, David went to a conference for work in Miami. At 28 weeks pregnant, I was less than thrilled with the notion of being on my own for four days to fend and manage for myself. Already at that point, I was having back pain and bending over was getting difficult. The exhaustion that has become my constant companion as well as the insufferable heat and humidity we were experiencing at that time made me a bit weary of being able to adequately care for myself, the dog and the household while he was gone. David, unwittingly did not help matters. Saturday night he called me from his hotel. He had been reading on the balcony of his posh hotel, from which he had an unobstructed view of the beach. My husband, being smart and thoughtful was doing a little pleasure reading from Mindset. For those of you who don't know, Mindset is not exactly the latest Dan Brown. It is a book about research on intelligence. In any case, dutiful husband that he is, he called to check in with me. After I rattled off a litany of complaints and annoyances, including my most recent favorite which is that I was feeling like a tub of butter, to which David patiently listened, he preceded to tell me all about a bachelorette party going on in the room next door about which, it occurred to me, he seemed to know a surprising amount. I finally ask him how he knew all of this and he innocently said, "Oh, because they invited me over to have a beer with them." It might have been my silence that was a sharper reply than anything I could have said, but regardless, he quickly followed up with, "I took the beer and came inside my room." Now, any of you who know David well enough understand the irony in that of all of the potential men in the world who could have been roomed next to a bachelorette party in a posh hotel on Miami beach, it was him. And those of you that know my husband well enough are probably the ones reading this blog, so I won't elaborate. And, those of you who know my husband well enough, know me well enough so I am assuming you can also imagine at 28 weeks pregnant, feeling like a tub of butter, my less than receptive response. Whereas at any other time, I would have appreciated the humor in the situation, I myself was not in the particular frame of mind where that was possible. Needless to say, for the rest of the night I was frenzied and worried that I would not be able to get to sleep. So, I broke the one cardinal rule of the household. I let Zeldie sleep in the bed. I figured it was the only way I could coax her at this point to actually stay put and sleep with me. Now Zeldie, always wants to get up on the bed. She puts her little front paws up there and pops her head up. Sometimes she even jumps up there when we are in the living room to retrieve and chew on a discarded piece of clothing. Sometimes we find her toys up there. The top of the bed is her Everest. However, that night, she was downright uncomfortable on the bed. I could tell because of her shallow breathing and twitchy eyes. She was like, "Mommy, I know this isn't allowed and I am afraid Daddy is going to walk into the room at any point and yell at me. You are breaking the rules and I don't like it." So, I let her hop down. She slept on the floor by my side for I am not sure how long because I eventually fell asleep. In the morning, I found her on the big chair in the living room. She has been sleeping there ever since. I still remember when she was a littler puppy and we tried to let her sleep outside of the crate. It was, by all accounts, a disaster. Having little to no self-regulation, our dog did not know what to do with herself in vast and cavernous expanse of our 850 square foot condo, especially at 3 AM when she was awake and were were asleep and any and all manner of disruption would not wake us. So, instead she would find more destructive hobbies to occupy her time and relieve her boredom and anxiety. Now, although, she had a slight learning curve at first, she pretty much wanders in like clockwork at the same time every morning to wake us up and get us started. It took her a couple of tries to get her internal timing mechanism set properly. But now, we can pretty much count on her to be about as consistent 7 days a week as the full moon is every 30 days. Zeldie is our very own canine alarm clock.