Last night I woke up at around 1:30am to a banging noise. It was obvious to me it was one of my dogs banging on a door to be let in/let out of someplace. Since they were both asleep when I went to bed last night, this seemed odd.
I got up and out of bed immediately and checked for the dogs. They both always sleep in the same spots – Angelus on his bed and Storm under our bed (it’s a tall bed.) Storm wasn’t there. So I checked the spare bedroom and office as their doors were closed. They aren’t usually closed but until Storm’s Cushing’s Disease medication kicks in, I have been making sure to give him less open areas in the house to have an “accident”.
But no Storm in those rooms. Checked the garage and then back downstairs to the master bedroom to check the closet. Now this was in a span of a minute or 2. I was flying around the house looking for him. Where could he be? Then I decide to look out the window of the front door. And I see his little head.
I let him in and he ran right downstairs to the bedroom and drank almost a whole bowl of water. And then scooted under the bed and just sat there, panting very hard. He was clearly very stressed out. I hung out with him, petting him for about 15 minutes and he fell asleep. This means he was off-leash, no collar or tags and free to roam the neighborhood and get lost. Or worse – get hit by a car. We have only a few streetlights on our street and some of the streets around us have none. Rural area.
Luckily Storm is a Momma’s boy and would not venture away unless his brother led his away (who was likely annoyed that he was stuck inside!) Or if he saw a cat, raccoon, skunk, etc., then he would have taken off after it for sure. Not entirely sure how he got OUT of the yard. Must investigate that. Thinking that he squeezed himself between the posts on the gate. But thankfully, his desire to always be by his people, kept him safely at the front door wanting to be let in. He is quite the creature of routine and he knew it was sleepy time (you tell them “sleepy time” and they go right to their beds.) It was very dark out (fog, no moonlight, no outside lights on) and he was stuck outside – which never happens. This stressed him out. Since he has Cushing’s Disease and just got over a too-many-doctor-visit-stress-induced tummy/GI issue, I really don’t want him stressed further.
Plus I had a weird accident the day before (car peeling out of parking lot and not seeing me crossing Highway 1 so had to run fast out of his way, tripped myself up, causing me to take a digger on the asphalt so that I could pull the dogs forward in front of me and out of the street.) This freaked me out a bit as I had been having these weird thoughts about something happening to the dogs. So…thinking about him being stressed and sad, wondering why he was alone and stuck outside in the dark, made *me* very sad and stressed out. All of this likely contributing to my bad dreams for the rest of the night.
Then as I was petting Storm and he was panting hard, my husband woke up and asked what all the commotion was. I told him Storm was stuck outside and I just let him in (knowing it was he who let him out into the front yard and then apparently forget to bring him inside before he went to bed.) Oh, he says. And goes back to sleep. Grrrr.
I went back to bed and had nightmares for the rest of the night about bad things happening to the dogs. I would fall asleep for a few minutes and then the same nightmare would wake me up. All night long. I finally gave up trying to get any sleep around 5:30am. I don’t recall what the details of the nightmares were anymore, just the bad feeling of them.
This morning, husband told me he must have forgotten that he let Storm out to pee last night and then just went to bed. Oops. Kind of funny really, right? No, notsomuch. He then asked if Storm scratched the front door when he wanted to be let in. I don’t know. And actually don’t care.
Nothing bad happened to Storm other than some unneeded stress on his little system. But thinking of what could have happened stresses me out. I normally don’t think that way actually but when it comes to the safety of my doggies, I am very careful and probably a bit neurotic. So a little more concern displayed this AM would have been nice but whatever. Storm is contently catching up on his sleep…
Sleepy puppy...
But today, I am very exhausted. And grumpy. Instead of eating lunch I am typing this in the hopes my venting will alleviate my stress/upset. But I better eat something today at some point or someone could get stabbed…
