Bad to the bone
Operation: Jelly Snooze is not going so well. Last night marked Day Six of this effort, and I am sorry to report that we are still spending about an hour awake in the middle of the night -- an hour that involved the squirt bottle and much cursing. The bizarre thing is that it's not Jelly who's causing the problems... well, all of them, anyway.
Last night, she got up to do her usual wandering around and plowed straight into the baby gate we have blocking the door. The gate is old and broken -- it's one of those wooden ones that pinch your fingers when you adjust it -- and so we just prop it up in front of the door. Which means that when a 20-pound dog walks into it at 5:45, it goes down with quite a crash. Jelly, who after all is mostly deaf, is totally unphased by this, though it wakes me and Darren with a start and causes Rocky to completely lose what little sanity she has. So we're awake, Jelly's wandering and Rocky is sitting on my arm, trembling and whimpering.
This goes on for about 45 minutes -- Jelly eventually settles down and goes to sleep, but every time she snores (which is frequently), Rocky whimpers and trembles violently. Rocky hops off the bed to find refuge in her own bed, but then Jelly's wandering re-commences and my dozing is interrupted by a snarl-fest that occurs when Jelly wanders into Rocky. Somewhere in there is where the cursing -- and the squirting of Rocky with water -- began.
Darren and I were talking about this drama this morning, and his conclusion is that the canine badness is a zero-sum game -- that if Jelly is getting better, then Rocky's going to get worse. Ugh.
The next step, we think, is making Jelly sleep downstairs. I think she will be ok with this, but there is a decent chance that she will bark her idiot head off when she realizes that we've abandoned her. I forsee a large investment in Tylenol PM in our future...
Last night, she got up to do her usual wandering around and plowed straight into the baby gate we have blocking the door. The gate is old and broken -- it's one of those wooden ones that pinch your fingers when you adjust it -- and so we just prop it up in front of the door. Which means that when a 20-pound dog walks into it at 5:45, it goes down with quite a crash. Jelly, who after all is mostly deaf, is totally unphased by this, though it wakes me and Darren with a start and causes Rocky to completely lose what little sanity she has. So we're awake, Jelly's wandering and Rocky is sitting on my arm, trembling and whimpering.
This goes on for about 45 minutes -- Jelly eventually settles down and goes to sleep, but every time she snores (which is frequently), Rocky whimpers and trembles violently. Rocky hops off the bed to find refuge in her own bed, but then Jelly's wandering re-commences and my dozing is interrupted by a snarl-fest that occurs when Jelly wanders into Rocky. Somewhere in there is where the cursing -- and the squirting of Rocky with water -- began.
Darren and I were talking about this drama this morning, and his conclusion is that the canine badness is a zero-sum game -- that if Jelly is getting better, then Rocky's going to get worse. Ugh.
The next step, we think, is making Jelly sleep downstairs. I think she will be ok with this, but there is a decent chance that she will bark her idiot head off when she realizes that we've abandoned her. I forsee a large investment in Tylenol PM in our future...
posted by mc at 8:58 AM
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