Sedation

Some dogs are afraid of vacuum cleaners. Others hate fireworks. All dogs fear thunderstorms.

If you’ve been watching the news, you know that Tennessee and other Southern states have been hit by serious thunderstorms. Down here in Chattanooga, we’ve not had the intense rains they had in Nashville, but last night we had lots of rain, lightning, and thunder.

I love a good thunderstorm, but I love sleep better. So I turned on the hepa filter (lots of white noise) and fell asleep. About half an hour later, Jacob woke me up. He was leaving Jezebel in our room. Jez hates thunderstorms. Last week we had a thunderstorm and Matt woke to find Jez in his bed between him and the wall. She’d climbed into his bed and crawled over him. Matt ordered her out of his bed. Jez played dumb. Matt grabbed her legs and pulled. She fought him. Matt woke Jacob. Together they pulled the dog out of Matt’s bed. She sulked all night. The bottom line was that they weren’t going through that again.

Through my sleep-induced haze I said, “Right, sure.” And so began the night of missed sleep. In all fairness to Jez, she doesn’t bark or whine when she’s anxious. She’s more of a “panting pacer.” She pants like she’s just gotten back from Cal’s three miles uphill run. And she paces. Not just walking back and forth. She forces her body under our bed, pulling the blankets and sheets with her. Then she crawls out and goes into the bathroom, banging against the tub, the sink, and the toilet. But she doesn’t find any comfort in the porcelain--not even in the bathtub, which she briefly tried to sleep in. Cal gets up and brings her back to the side of our bed (for the fourth or fifth time). I just roll over. But lying on the floor doesn’t stop the lightning from painting the room or the thunder from shaking the windows. Jez gets up again. This time she decides she needs to go into Ariel’s bedroom. So she bangs against our door. It’s an old house, and you can get the door locks to “pop” if whack it hard enough. Finally, Jez makes it into Ar’s room. I wake up Cal. “Jez’s in Ariel’s room.” Now Cal is either too tired or too humble to say, “Why don’t you do something about it?” He gets up and retrieves our stupid dog. At this point, Cal put her spiked collar and leash on her. We slept briefly, and Cal remembered that he hadn’t put the trash out. So he gave me the leash. At some point I fell asleep and dropped the leash. It was a long night. I’m beginning to wonder if you can give dogs Benadryl. Of course, with my luck I’ll have the one dog in the world who’s sensitive to Benadryl, and then she’ll end up in bed with us.