I love my dog. LOVE him! But. He's like the snooze alarm I never wanted.
Sometime between 4-5 a.m. every day - Toby creeps out from under the covers and does a nice ear-slapping shake, standing right next to me. If I don't look awake right away, he proceeds to paw at me with his feet, throw his body over me and poke me in the face with his damp nose. He has to pee. I get it.
I get up, dish out some mild verbal abuse that he neither understands nor cares about, put on my robe and slippers, pull his harness up into his hot little armpits, clip on the leash, and take him out to the front yard. He doesn't waste any time, fortunately. I give him his "thanks for not peeing in the house" treats and go back to bed without bothering to take off my robe. He jumps up, waits for me to lift the covers, curls up under my right arm and we both to back to sleep.
Sometime between 6 and 6:30 a.m. every morning - Toby crawls out from under the blankets and gets in another good shake, followed by a repeat of his tried and true methods of making me get up. If those don't work he might actually bark because he is starving—STARVING, I TELL YOU!—and cannot be made to wait another moment for his morning scoop of kibble.
We sometimes go back to bed after Toby's breakfast time, but we really shouldn't.
The whole routine played out this morning as usual, but it was especially painful because I was awakened at 1:00 a.m. by a hellacious hailstorm that pounded on the bedroom windows so loudly that it woke me up even over the sound of my bedside fan.
I'm actually okay with the two routine morning sleep interruptions, but add one more and I'm over my limit for sleep disruption.
As tempting as it was to take a little nap at my desk today, I'm happy to report that I resisted. But I will not be staying up late today, that's for sure.
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