Night of the Living Dead

Who needs sleep? Or rather, who needs to sleep consecutive hours in a row? Apparently Leeloo doesn't and that means neither do I. For the past few nights, although I have been able to sleep in my own bed, I have been woken by Leeloo insisting that I get up for one reason or another. Sometimes it's because she needs to go out, sometimes it's because she can't decide which part of the bed she wants to sleep on, but most of the time it's for no reason at all.

I'm pretty sure she knows what time it is - "Hmmm, Tamzin fell asleep at 10:30pm. Oh look, it's 11pm. TAMZIN! I have to poop now." Better still is when she allows me to get into a deeper sleep and it takes some effort to rouse me. "Whine. Whiiiine. Whiiiiiiiine. Whiiiiiiiiiiiine. Oh look! You're awake! Hey, can I have a snack?"Sometimes I've been sleeping for a whole 2 hours when she decides she wants to feed the puppies. This is certainly something she is capable of doing without supervision but she wakes me anyway at about 4am just to be sure she's doing it right. She gets into the whelping box, lays down and waits for me to poke puppies underneath her. I suppose her reasoning might be that I got her into this mess so I am at least going to be inconvenienced as much as she can make possible.

The worst way to be woken by Leeloo is the Night Walk. I didn't trim her nails last week because she had the puppies and that was stress enough. Today, now that they are 8 days old and look like little walruses, she is getting a manicure because being woken by the click clack of nails on the floor at 3am Makes. Me. Crazy. She's not really even walking with purpose, just wandering around the house, to the back door, around the dining table, to the bathroom, into the bedroom, and back again. At least if her nails were shorter I wouldn't be able to hear it.

  
So enough of my complaints, how about some photos of babies? Oh whoops, Mr Light Wheaton better hope I don't show this to his girlfriend when he's a teenager!

The time Leeloo doesn't spend waking me up at night is used to clean puppies and make them 'go' since they can't always do it on their own. As they age their bowels and bladders start to function but initially Momma has to stimulate them - this is probably something to do with keeping the 'den' clean - but for the puppies it's certainly not a dignified time in their lives.

She can be quite vigorous about it, I think it has something to do with keeping them active and using their underdeveloped muscles but I'm pretty sure this chore is not such a chore for most canine mothers considering how much Leeloo likes to clean them. The puppy's grandma Halo was notorious for loving to clean the puppy pen even when they were well past needing her care!  

Despite all the work involved and the lack of sleep for both Leeloo and me, I do know she is happy there are 9 on the outside of her instead of on the inside! Even when one is jamming its little foot into the side of her face.