Last Night, or, Why I Almost Punted My Childhood Pet

Background: My parents are in Virginia visiting family, leaving me in charge of the house and the dogs-- Penny, my 13 year old, nervous, paranoid, arthritic childhood pet and Koli, a 3 year old dog-puppy (read like "man-child"). I work at a before and after school program for K-5th graders which requires me to be up at 5:30 in the morning.

Scene:

10:30pm. I've just cleaned up after a friend left. Pretty late for me, but we had a good time and I knew I could power through the next day (which was all day daycare because the kids didn't have school-- 9 hours) with 6 1/2 hours of sleep and coffee in the morning. I took the dogs upstairs and gated them in with me in my bedroom because I think it will have a calming effect on me and hopefully the dogs will sleep as long as I do instead of getting up early to bark until they're let out.

11:30pm. In bed, done reading, lights off, instantly asleep.

4am. Penny wakes me by grunting, whining, and pawing at the side of the bed. I think she's just anxious about being in a different room so pull her onto the bed to sleep with me. At which point I realize she's shaking. Penny shakes when it thunderstorms, weird people show up, there's construction going on, or, you know, because a leaf blows near her. Then I hear a distant beep. Beeping, oh boy beeping is a big deal. Penny's hot, smelly, stress breath immediately blasts my face and her nose shoves my cheek.

4:10am. I grab the second floor fire alarm and bring it into bed, hoping a low battery is the cause of the sporadic beeping.

4:16am. A distant beep again summons Penny's quaking form to the head of the bed and pulls me into the cold to investigate.

4:19am. I find the first floor fire alarm and take it upstairs, cuddling it in bed, knowing surely this is the cause of the beeping.

4:25am. It's not. Penny practically rolls me out of bed with her urgent nosing, that and the potency of her panting.

4:28am. I find the carbon monoxide detector, which starts beeping every 30 seconds, happily notifying me that it needs new batteries. I haul it to the kitchen to give it new life, after which it chirps proudly. I hear a crash upstairs and a cascade of dog steps coming down the stairs and barreling to the safety of the downstairs. After staring at the detector to make sure that it was beeping to say thank you and not to say RUN! GET OUT OF YOUR HOUSE NOW!, I walk to return the detector to its home and discover that Penny's pooped.

4:35am. I finish cleaning up the poop and turn to find that Koli's peed. At least the cleaning supplies are in hand.

4:40am. Finally, I crawl back into bed with Koli, leaving Penny downstairs hoping she'll calm down and sleep down there.

4:45am. Penny wanders into my room and starts to grunt and paw at my bed again. I resolve to ignore her in an attempt to make her sleep on the floor and leave me alone.

4:55am. Resolve gives way to my need for sleep, so I roll over to pick her up onto the bed. My sweatpant-covered hip hits air and is suddenly cold. Why? BECAUSE PENNY PEED ON MY BED.

5:05am. I've stripped my bed, layered my parents' bed with blankets and settled down to sleep for the next 25 minutes. Penny begins to paw at the bed and whine. I ignore her.

5:25am. Penny stops whining and settles down to sleep.

5:30am. My alarm goes off.

No amount of coffee can fix that.



Koli, atop my ridiculously comfy bed (usually it's not buried in clothes... ah, who am I kidding, it is).


Penny, my worried, in your face, stink breath puppy. This is basically what I saw when in bed most of the night last night.