Up at Night

I don't sleep as well as I used to. Once in a while I'm awake at 1 a.m. and don't go back to sleep for the rest of the night, but that doesn't happen very often. And sometimes I toss and turn for a couple of hours before I get to sleep (and that often has to do with a cup of coffee too late in the day). For the most part though, I'd say I sleep quite well. Except for the damn dogs.

I love all our dogs dearly, I do. They get to lounge around the house, and sleep on the bed, sleep on the couch, and generally they have a pretty good time. They'd rather be in than out in the winter, and that's fine with me. But they need to go out from time to time, and when they do, they not only do their doggy business, they eat snow. And lots of it. And they chew up ice. And they then they need to pee. And so they go back out. And eat more snow. And need to pee in the middle of the night. And so on, and so on. I was up at midnight and up at five a.m. letting desparate, squirming cross-legged dogs out to pee.

One solution would be to take them out on a leash, supervised one at a time, but by the time they sniff around and decide which snowbank they should pee against, I could be outside standing around for a very long time. Only another seven or eight weeks of snow, and I could be sleeping through the night again.