Sleepless in San Diego

"You don't want him/her to get his/her days and nights mixed up!" I can still hear the horror in my mother's voice, when she would make this declaration about some newborn or other. Last night I wondered if we had fallen into that discombobulatory nightmare.

In preparation for potentially disrupted sleep, Steve and I turned in a little before 10, putting Dionne in her baby kennel, a few feet away from Tucker's bed. And indeed, she was shrieking by 11:30, so Steve took the first trip out to the backyard with her. His report upon returning: a little pee, no poop, lots of scampering around in the dark, picking up twigs and leaves.

She woke us again around 1, and I took her out. Waiting for her to toilet gave me time to reflect on what a challenge it is to try to read a tiny fuzzy creature to whom you've been introduced just hours before. In the dark, bleary-eyed, I could barely make out the sight of her sniffing the ground, at times pawing it, but... was she looking for the spot in which to fulfill her urgent need to defecate (as dogs will sometimes do)? Or just goofing around? After waiting for a long time, I decided it was the latter, but back in our room, around 4, she was shrieking again. Once again Steve carried her down the stairs, through the house, around the pool and back to the lower yard. Not long after her return to the kennel, she was whining and emitting more mournful puppy howls.

Desperate and determined NOT to get up before 6, I hefted her kennel with her in it and moved it next to our bed, just inches from my face. Within minutes she settled down and slept till 6:20.

A sleeping puppy is a good puppy. 

So my current theory is that she was lonely and sad to be sleeping in a cold hard crate instead of a warm, smelly pile of litter mates. I think it was a mistake to put her so close to Tucker; she could see him and probably wanted to snuggle up (an idea Mr. Tucker would have loathed. He doesn't trust these little ones, the way they and their razor-sharp teeth nose around his belly and penis, looking for milk).  Tonight I'll put her next to me again. I'll insist that both Steve and I start the night wearing earplugs. I have a sense that this is a puppy who, given the right circumstances, can make it through the night. We'd all benefit from that happening sooner rather than later.