BORED dog

I've been trying to put in many hours at work. Both Monday and Tuesday I worked at my client's site rather than at home, and also worked long hours, and also had to rush out in the morning, so I was gone until late in the evening and the dogs got only a walk in the a.m. and a very small quantity of playtime.

Last night I dragged in sometime after 10:30. The dogs were ecstatic to see me, which I expected--they always are, that's the nice thing about dogs. However, all my dogs have always understood the concept of bedtime enough that, if I'm not heading up to bed by around 10 or 10:30, they precede me up there and start the long snooze on their own. Or start looking disgusted if I'm still mucking around actively.

That's usually true even when I've been out for the evening. They're happy when I come in, but their little internal doggie clocks get them to settle right into bed when I do.

Not last night. Tika had not had any mental or physical interaction worth mentioning for two days, and she was not going to let me forget it. When I crawled into bed, she crawled right up next to me and started putting her paw on my leg, my stomach, my arm, whatever she could reach. And then her chin. While I put drops in my ears and let them wrestle with the little bacteriae, I skritched and stroked her. When I turned out the light, even that wasn't enough. She snuggled more. Wanted more. I finally just told her to knock it off, and she did. But she was up in the middle of the night a couple of times, looking for something to do. She found a tubie-thing (empty toilet paper tube, valid dog toy) and slowly tore that into little pieces, alone, in the dark, at 3 a.m.

Poor poor dog. It sucks having a lot of energy and intelligence and enthusiasm to give and no one to give it to.

This morning, after another trip to the doctor's before which I did nothing with the beasts but feed them, we went for a nice long walk and then played a bit in the yard and tried to do some agility obstacles--problem was that by that time it was getting up well into the 80s in the sun and Tika got too hot too fast. So I hope we did enough--because I have to shower and head out to the client again for the rest of the afternoon.

And Tika has no class this week or next.

Tonight is Jake's weekly class; maybe I can split the evening between the two of them. I hate to take away from my time with Jake, but I also hate having a stir-crazy aussie thang.

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