Sainthood Qualifications

I’m no saint. Ask anyone who knows me. I have a short fuse, I’m impatient and I don’t like complications. I also really like my sleep. People who know me best know that a good 8 hours – preferably more – each night is what I need to stay my charming self. Needless to say my patience with Halo is rapidly approaching the end of the line.

Last night we had words. I’m not going to pretend there wasn’t some particularily colorful language used or that I didn’t refer to her by a plethora of descriptive terms normally uttered by teamsters and construction workers.

I was up at 1am to make sure she fed the little darlings. I got all the little ducks in a row – bottle fed 3 or 4 to ease the panic of nipple shortage and stumbled back to bed. 10 minutes later who do I hear making her way to her bed. Before she got too far I was up and insisting on an about-face. She went back into the puppy room – acting contrite but I know she’s not – and got on the futon. I told her to get in with the puppies, who of course were stumbling around wondering where the milk bar just went, and she slinked her ass over to the moose dog bed. I told her “GET IN THERE.” And she curled into a ball. Ever tried at 1am after only 2 ½ hours of sleep to physically lift an 80 pound dog gently into a seething mass of 12 puppies without having one get squashed? Use your imagination. It was not one of my best moments.

So eventually she was back in and everyone was happily sucking away again. She must have stayed a decent amount of time; and well she should under the threats of death and dire consequences I put to her. She did eventually go back to bed at some point but the puppies were satisfied and I was asleep.

What’s this? It’s 3:30am and Halo has to go outside? Really. I tried to ignore her but all she did was walk up and down the hallway and stop at the back door several times. You can imagine how things progressed from there. More expletives, Halo rushing outside, me pacing the laundry room while madam took her sweet time choosing just the right spot. I mean really – if you have to go so bad why be choosy about where? I will admit to yelling out the door at her a couple times with “Hurry the *&$#@!* up goddammit.” It was -15 out and I was in a foul foul mood okay? The neighbours must think I’m truly an unimaginable bitch – but only if they too were up at 3:30am opening the door to -15 weather for the convenience of a saucy cow.

Finally Halo finishes her desperate act and I let her in to go back to bed. Sadly, I had forgotten that on my way out of my room I’d pulled the bedroom door almost shut so Raimi wouldn’t get up. It was very dark (that whole 3:30am thing), Halo was pulling her very best high speed penant shuffle and WHAM! she hit the door, it flew open and she made an even faster retreat to her bed where she threw herself down in a dramatic huff. Sweet justice.

See first sentence.

So this morning she was all “Yes yes yes anything you want.” I know this blog entry makes me sound evil and like I have no sympathy for the hard working mom. However, all she’s working hard at is producing milk and pissing me off. I’d say she does almost nothing in the care of the puppies except clean them when it’s convenient for her and … well … nothing else. Being forced to feed them doesn’t count. She gets 4 lovely meals a day, and sleeps all the rest of the time. Literally.

She’s tired, bored and probably sick of the whole thing – except the eating poop part – that never gets old. I’ll start the puppies on solid food in 3 days and that will ease the strain on her. I’m starting the weaning a little earlier than usual because of circumstances and the number of puppies. They’ll sleep longer and more soundly if I do and I won’t need to get up in the middle of the night to get her to feed them. I’ll also completely wean them off her earlier too.

When I’m POed at Halo all I have to do is go in and see the babies and they make me feel better and that all this aggravation is worth it. I’m re-thinking another litter with her … but will have forgotten the angst we went through by the time I want to breed her again.

Oh wait, I was wrong, my middle name is St. Claire so I guess that makes the first sentence moot ...