The Insomniac Dog

We've all had it at some time in our lives. The dreaded night (or nights) with a bout of insomnia.

My most recent battle was in late August, about a week before my parents were to visit me for three weeks. It was purely stress induced, thinking about how clean my house needed to be and how neat everything should look and did I have the right foods in the house and what will happen at work while I'm on vacation with them . . . the list was incredibly long and for about a week, I spent most of my nights staring at the ceiling fan hoping the dullness of watching the blades rotate would send me off into a peaceful slumber.

This week, there has been insomnia in the house, but it's not me staying awake. It's the dog. Yep, Aero, the 3-1/2 pound Yorkie hasn't been sleeping much this week. And when the dog doesn't sleep, guess who else doesn't sleep?

I can't figure it out. Why would a dog have insomnia? What kind of stress, angst, worry or neurosis can a dog have? He doesn't have to get up and commute to and from work everyday. As a matter of fact, he doesn't have to work! No bills to pay. No house cleaning to be done. No grocery shopping. No laundry.

Aero leads quite the charmed life. He's an only dog and as such, has run of the household. He thinks he's the alpha male, but I don't let that bother me. Hey, he's only 3-1/2 pounds so he's not that hard to control. He sleeps on his special pillow (on the bed, of course) until about 7:15 each morning, has a leisurely stroll through the yard, then is left on the couch for the day. I'm sure he only gets up to move to another spot that has sunshine, and spends most of his day sleeping. His evenings are quite relaxed as well; several visits to the yard, sharing dinner with me, maybe some play time. And then off to bed.

It all starts about 1:00 a.m., with puppy whining, which turns into growling; if I don't respond, he starts barking. If I keep my eyes closed and try to ignore him, he resorts to more physical means of aggravation: the paw tapping my head or the cold wet nose in my ear. My favorite is the jumping and hitting my back with all 4 paws until I finally open my eyes and start asking questions like "what's wrong?" or "what do you need?" or "are you kidding me?" Like he can answer me.

I guess somehow in his little doggy world he has some stress that's keeping him up at night, and short of going to the doggy therapist, he's going to try to share his problems with me. Sigh. It's a good thing I love the little guy.

Kel