My life with my weim, whom I lovingly call my hound has been a wild 12 years. She has given me more than a few gray hairs. If I were to be honest she has given me more gray hair than the kids ever thought of. I created a monster the day I brought her home and was exhausted from driving 6 hours to get her and turning around driving 6 hours back. I laid her in her new Walmart bed. I fell into my soft, welcoming bed and I immediately heard her start to whine. 12 years later, I should have just let her whine. She was so soft and cuddly. What could one night of sleeping in my bed hurt. 12 years later, it hurt my sleep pattern immensely. Like she never left my bed and she booted The Stauff out of bed when she tipped the scale at 80 pounds. Now at 100 pounds, she knows my bed is her bed and allows me to sleep there. Although her seperation anxiety would kick in if I weren’t there and she would find wherever I was and would sleep there anyway. Trust me, that connection is a Weim thing.
Since she was in my bed, when she would catch a smell filtering through the house and blow up, pacing till I let her out. She would blow out the door with her hair sticking straight up off her ass. She looks both ways in the yard, ears flopping up and down, the blue of her eyes darting around, just in case a random raccoon was lurking in the shadows. Nothing, she sniffs around the fresh cut grass and finds the perfect spot to pee. Barks a few more times, kicks her back feet up kicking up dead grass as it flies behind her. This goes on about 5-10 mins. Then she is ready to come back in and sleep for a few more hours before it starts all over again. This has been my life for 12 years. I have been living a new born baby life for 12 years. The up and down every night has created a bad sleep pattern for me. I talked to my Dr. and I told her how tired I am about 2:00 P.M. The converstaion went like this.
Me: “also, I am having a hard time about mid day. I am so tired around 2 I could just face plant”.
Dr: “How is your sleep pattern? I ask because sometimes people have sleep issues that need further testing with. Do you feel you get enough deep sleep?”
Me: “Well I usually get up 3 or 4 times a night”.
Dr: “What makes you get up that much during the night?”
Me: “Um, my dog needs to be let out. She paces around my bed until I let her out”.
Dr: “oh”..
Me: “deep sigh”
Dr: “how long has this gone on?”
Me: “well, she is going to be 12 years old next month.”
Dr: “Oh shhhhhii…”
Me:…………..
Dr: “I am so sorry, I don’t think I can help with you being so tired”.
As you can see I get excited to go on work trips, cause I get a bed to myself for the whole night. Although, after 12 years, my body just thinks it needs to get up. I am used to it. What is a girl to do with a dog that she adores?
This whole not sleeping was perplexing to me. I wondered if I did get a solid nights sleep would it make a difference. Would I be like the Grinch and my black heart might beat a little different with a little sleep? I decided to try a sleep app to see how well my sleep really was. What could it hurt? I found an app that I thought would do the ticket.. monitored sleep, rem sleep, deep sleep, awake time etc. Then it would analyze it. I set it all up and hit start.
I had a hard time going to sleep that night. I went to bed around 10:30 and saw 11 roll on past like nothing.. I finally drifted off to sleep at some point. In the middle of the night, all of a sudden something hit me in the face. Like dead center on my nose. I swear to God himself I thought someone was in the house and I was about to be featured on a tik tok rabbit hole of what happened to Kris Stauffer. My mind flashed with locations of all the guns and knives in the house. All of the configurations came back with, “You are probably just going to die”. I thought about the punch to the noise and was thankful I dont have any bones in my nose, I felt it would have broke or seriously tweaked if I had. This all spun out in what felt like 10 seconds. I finally opened my eyes to see who had smoked me on the nose. Brave to meet my fate. Complete darkness. “shit” I thought, “who or what in the hell was that”. I thought to myself “hold up, ya know it kinda felt like the hounds paw”. I reach out and feel the hounds foot. I grab it and extend it to my face.. yep.. sound asleep she was.. must have been dreaming and kicked me in the face. I holler at her. “Geezus H..move your ass”. She grumbled and moaned and moved to her side. Back to bed. Then she smelled a smell, off to the door.. bark and holler.. back to bed.. back to sleep.
My little app started shaking and sending out some odd noises abruptly at 7:00 A.M. Hushing my phone and stretching I remembering the app, I was excited to review my metrics. I get a “congratulations your sleep quality was 83%”. 83% I thought. HOW?? I kept reading. It said I fell asleep 9 minutes after going to bed. Now, I am calling bullshit. I saw the clock hit past 11:00. Then I look at the graphs of what looks to be alot of deep rem sleep. Eh? When?
I reviewed the recordings hoping and half ass praying I heard no voices.. 
.. at approximately 1:20 A.M., I heard some noise and then a “geezus H. Move your ass”. “Ahh”, I thought, that is when The Hound kicked me in the nose. Remembering the thought that my life was ending at the hands of some sketch shit made me chuckle. Then I heard her bark and go out, come back in.. I went through the rest of the metrics. Amazed, it all shows I slept well. I sat their pondering as I pet my hound.. the hound.. she snored all night. That damn app picked up her snoring and put it into my metrics. Which is why “I” went to sleep 9 mins after I hit the button.. damn it. First she smokes me in the nose and then steals my cool app. I can’t win..at least one us is getting good sleep.
