Paws In Your Mouth Is Not the Choice Way to Wake Up

It is currently 2:30 am. My dog is chewing on a bottle of Aloe Vera lotion at my feet. She woke me up over an hour ago by sitting on my back and chewing on my face.

Just now she went to the closed door of our bedroom and began clawing. The boyfriend has to be up in just over two hours. I got up and closed the bedroom door after she woke me. She barked and scratched and howled and whined until I got up and took her outside.

We couldn’t take her for her 4th walk of the day because it was, as they say, comin’ a tornado outside. Our little herding dog requires four to five walks a day. If I take her running with me we can whittle off two or three of those walks. Maybe. But if she isn’t properly exercised Tootie will lose her shit.

She bites. She leaps. She flips around on the couch and digs at the cushions like a freak thing on speed.

So we went outside in the backyard and ran around. At 1:30 in the morning I chased her around the yard throwing an empty two-liter bottle around for her to catch and carry. It is her favorite toy. We ran around outside in the wind and cold for twenty minutes, me chasing her as she tore ass in circles around me. It still wasn’t enough.

-wait-

Oh yay, she’s eating now. Thank God. Eating usually calms her happy ass down.

The dog tricked me, you know. I thought I was getting this docile, chilled out pet who liked to lay around as much as I do. The dog fucking outsmarted me, because she’s not lazy, she’d just had a total hysterectomy a day and half prior to us taking her home. And I had no idea until we got her up to the front to adopt her.

Not that I would have changed my mind, but I laugh now when I think about the boyfriend saying she must be broken. On those first few days we’d take her for a walk and she’d just lie down in the middle of the street, unwilling to go on. Now our walks are much like live action video games, with squirrels by the dozen at every turn and a neighbor cat always hiding in the bushes. Tootie crabs along on her leash, heaving and panting at the smorgasbord of rodents and felines before her. I really should be armed with some kind of stun gun.

Anyway, I’m going to try to go talk the dog to sleep, rub her belly until she snores and makes her dog lips flap. This "practice baby" thing is much harder than I anticipated, but so much more rewarding. (Except for the picking up poop at the park, I still can’t get into that.)