Women Who Love Too Much (and the Dogs They Love) (and the Dogs Who Love Them)

Remember that book from the 80’s, Women Who Love Too Much? (Subtitled When You Keep Wishing and Hoping He’ll Change.) Back in the day of all those cleverly-titled zillion-copy best-seller, self-help relationship volumes like Smart Women, Foolish Choices and Men Are From Mars, Women Are From Venus. This particular book was all about “women who believe being in love means being in pain.”

I think I might have made fun of that book at one time. But I’m not laughing now.

“Pain” was heavy on my mind this Sunday morning at 6 am when Dog did his best to wake me up from a dead sleep, jumping up on my side of the bed, clawing and whining for my attention. Even though my husband tried to rescue me by offering to take Dog downstairs and let me sleep in, Dog refused to leave my side. Such is the obsessive loyalty of Too Much Love.

Normally Dog and I are up before dawn. We like it that way. We get a little time to sneak in a cup of coffee and a chicken treat and a bit of a snuggling/writing session on the couch before the rest of the family gains consciousness and starts making demands for pancakes and signed permission slips and clean underwear.

But on a normal night before a normal morning, I’m normally soundly snoozing by 10 pm. But the night before Sunday was not normal and I was up past midnight taking the kids to see a friend in a regional production of The Wizard of Oz. Not enough sleep! And it was Sunday!

No matter. As smart as Dog is, I can’t seem to get him to understand the concept of the weekly calendar or a teacher’s workday. (And, to be fair to Dog, the random holidays and week-long Winter/Spring breaks and the big Summer vacations must be very confusing to him--I know they are to me!)

Although Dog's breed has been raised to be purely companion dogs, I truly think that Dog has a bit of a work ethic in him (maybe it's nurture vs. nature working here) and he believes that it is his sole responsibility to make sure that everyone is up and out of the house on time. I think it gives him a sense of purpose, which is probably very important to his self-esteem, and is something that I, as a transplanted native Californian, feel obligated to honor.

So, even though I was able to use my Alpha Dog commands and get Dog to leave me alone for awhile, at 6:45 am, he was absolutely frantic about waking me up. As I stumbled into my slippers, he didn’t follow his normal routine of going downstairs with me. He barged immediately into my daughter’s room—intent on waking her up for school, which is his normal task--Monday through Friday.

“Dog, It’s Sunday!” I reprimanded in a whisper so as not to wake my sleeping daughter. Dog rolled over on his back in the "surrender" position.

“Damn Dog,” I muttered to myself as I picked him up and carried him down the steps and walked into the kitchen to put on the coffee. “Sunday, Sunday! Sunday is a very important concept!” Certainly more important than “Sit” and maybe even more important than “Go Pee-Pee” or “Treat”—at least to me.

To be continued….