I never sleep well when we have a foster dog. I am always acutely aware that there is another living creature in my house for whom I am responsible. No matter how quiet the kids may try to be if they're on overnight duty, the minute I hear a bit of dog noise I am AWAKE AWAKE AWAKE.
Before I had kids I worried that they would need me in the night and I would sleep through it. I used to be such a heavy sleeper. And now I seem to have permanent mom-ears. The click of a dog's toenail on the floor is enough to send me SPROINGING into the new day.
I assume at some point I would get used to this, if we were to adopt a permanent dog. Mickey has been a little more wakeful at night than most of our other foster dogs. If he's sleeping upstairs, where it's hotter, he wants to get a drink toward morning and then go back to sleep. I don't know if it has to do with being 50 or if I have somehow broken something in my brain, but I can't really go back to sleep these days. I hear him come downstairs and it's as if a bugle chorus, a hundred members strong, just played reveille in my bedroom.
Nobody would own a dog if this were a permanent state of affairs, right? How long does it take to go away? Our longest foster stays were 3.5 weeks, and that wasn't long enough for my brain to settle down.
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