Crying Wolf

At 2:00 a.m. last night I was awoken to what sounded like Mariah Carey giving birth to a 1976 Buick LeSabre with a bad serpentine belt. Or maybe it was Fran Drescher passing a kidney stone. Either way, the clamor startled me wide-eyed from a very pleasant dream involving this year’s SI swimsuit cover model.
Turns out, it was just our new Malamute puppy, April, suffering from separation anxiety in her dog crate. Puppies whine at night. That’s nothing new. But this one yelps and howls like someone is trying to strangle her with her own tail.
I expected it during night one. Unfamiliar place, locked in a tight space, it’s natural for a young pup to cry a bit. This is especially true for an 11-week old whelp just adopted from a loving foster home.
But early this morning, I thought someone was blowing a rape whistle in my ear. Or worse yet, was playing a Dave Matthews Band album on the surround sound (actually, I take that back, I’d rather listen to a thousand screeching puppies than listen to DMB).
Thinking she just needed to water the yard, I put on my robe and let the little hellion out of her crate. She watered the sunroom rug instead, but I figured she’d just settle back down and go to bed.
Nope.
She likes to play this game. It’s called, I’m Going to Go Ahead and Attempt to Eat Everything That Enters My Line of Sight. This is cute at 5:00 in the afternoon when you have the energy to wrestle away the remote control she’s nibbling on. But at 2:30 in the morning, when she’s clamped on your earlobe and spraying urine on your slippers, it’s not so charmingly precocious.
Finally she finished chewing my face and showed some signs of slowing down. Her eyes began to droop and she put her furry face between her paws. She climbed up and curled herself into my lap and sighed a precious puppy sigh. She tilted her head and looked up at me with two sleepy eyes that seemed to say, ‘Thanks, dad. This early morning stuff won’t last forever, but I appreciate the effort in the meantime. Let’s call it a night.'
All puppy breath and wagging tail, I picked her up and carried her limp, wet nosed, half-asleep body back to her crate.
Okay, I thought. Now I remember… this is what I signed up for.