Walter's Bedtime

Poor Walter. When we were living in Lake Stevens and both working all day, I felt guilt about locking him up at night after being penned all day, and we started letting him sleep with us. We had to put a stop to that in Snohomish when he started having accidents at night. After a couple times of getting up at night to change the bed and wash the mattress we figured it was time for him to hit the floor. So he had a bed on the floor beside Dave. No, Dave wasn't on the floor, just Walter. He would beg and plead for us to take him to bed with us and it was so hard to say no, but we just had to. Then we found out that he was sneaking out at night to do nasties, so we had to graduate to a pen again.

So now we have this ritual. Before bed Dave takes him out potty and then babies him all the way back in, cuddling him and talking to him, but when they hit the bedroom door it starts in. He turns in to Mr. Grumpy. He growls and bites at Dave's hands. Then he sits him down on the floor and it continues. He will sit there for the longest time growling and barking. Then eventually he will make his way to the pen, still growing.

He gets in still grumbling and growling and will do that for several minutes before settling down.

Sometimes he will break the routine, and Dave will sit him down and he will literally run for the bed, but once in there he barks and growls for about 5 minutes before going to sleep. But then come morning, we can hardly get him out of the bed. Dave will bring the bed out with him and open the door, then get coffee and sit down at the computer, and maybe he will come out on his own, but quite often he has to be persuaded out.

Oh yes, and we continue to have daily snow storms. It's so wierd. Sunday it was snowing the biggest flakes you've ever seen. They accumulated quite suddenly and we even had a thunder storm at the same time. Then in the afternoon the sun came out and you would have thought it was spring again. Then today, the same thing. The flakes weren't quite as big as yesterday, but in my daily update from the mayor he said that the hills were quite slippery and they had snow plows out. Then in the afternoon we had a brief spell of beautiful sunshine again, and then back to the snow.