Adventures of a Dog-ma - Night Sounds...

Brody has had four years to break us in to his peculiarities so he's not getting much play in the blog about his oddities... but really, when I think about it, he doesn't really have any. Well... he does seem to have extremely vivid dreams and actually woke me up this morning with a low, mournful throaty whistle of sorts - whatever he was dreaming about was sad. So I woke him up and he was fine but he does get quite animated in his dreams complete with vocalizations and some fancy footwork! He also isn't a prancer or pacer when he's hungry or needs to go out, he prefers to sit directly in front of you and stare intently in your eyes until you catch a clue and take care of whatever it is that he needs. If you don't respond for a while, he goes and lies down and tries again later. He's really the easiest dog in the world!

Glacier, on the other hand, is a constant source of entertainment. She emits a high-pitched, muffled howl when she wants your attention, when she thinks we're going for a walk/ride/outside/or other such fun activity or when you walk by and she thinks you haven't pet her recently enough. She also reminds me a bit of my cat Charlie's old habit and races down the stairs in the morning to beat me into the living room where she lies in wait with her butt in the air and chest on the floor howling... and then as soon as I cross into the living room, she pounces on me and grabs my fingers in her mouth as we head to the door. She's a bit of a loose cannon.

The other night we had all settled in for the night - we'd finally kicked the two dogs off the bed (100 lbs of dog is a lot to handle when sorting out blankets and pillows!) and all was quiet. Glacier had tip-toed downstairs (we never heard her leave) and as we quietly watched our movie and were drifting off to sleep, we heard the tell-tale sound of her coming back up the stairs... She dropped her bone. It's a large bone (made to resemble a beef bone except it doesn't splinter) about 6" long and 2.5" in diameter. It's heavy. She had apparently made it nearly to the top step of our wood-treaded stairs when it slipped out of her jaws and tumbled like a slow-moving slinky to the bottom step. 

My husband and I looked at each other as the deliberate 12-13 "clonk, clunk, thunks" rang through the house as the bone  plummeted and when it came to rest without the sounds of shattered glass or whimpering dog, we erupted in laughter! Going to get the bone was clearly too much for her so she walked into the bedroom, flopped on her bed and let out a perfunctory old man groan. .

I have only ever heard one other dog make the noises that Glacier makes on a regular basis. A few months ago my sisters and I were walking with one of their dogs - a 9-10 month old black lab 70 lb "puppy" named Homer. We were just finishing up a five mile loop in the fast-approaching dark when we decided to check in on a neighbor's newborn calf and his herd of cows. Before we knew what was happening, Homer slipped through the electric fence into the pasture with the cows. He was a rookie with cows and with a newborn calf in there, we didn't know how the cows would react so we had to scramble to get him out as quickly as possible. After several efforts to coax him back through the live fence by separating the strands with some fiberglass poles we had found, we realized we were ONLY going to get him out by going in there and getting him. In the pitch black we finally found the shut off switch to the fence and my sister climbed in... but Homer wouldn't come any where near the fence (having gotten zapped on the nose the one time we got him to almost come through the separated strands) so she had to lift him up, carry him ~20 feet back to the fence, and hand him over the fence to me. All the way home Homer made noises I had never heard a dog make before - groans, grunts, grunts that morphed into yelps, groans that slid into howls - he was a sad sad puppy!

So now we have a dog that makes noises constantly. She's not a barker (thank God!) but she grunts and groans like an old man settling into his chair, howls, woofs quietly through her closed lips... and she snores. She snores worse than most men I know! The other night I was working in my office, which is the next room over from our bedroom, and for a second, I thought my husband had gone to bed... but it wasn't him snoring so loud that I needed to shut the door in order to concentrate - it was our 40 lb dog!

She has brought a lot of joy and energy to the house... and she is getting away from some of her naughty settling in/puppy behaviors... and we all love her. But sometimes Brody looks at her like she's a completely different species and totally off her rocker. She kind of is.