All bound for morning-town

It's been an odd sort of a week with Beattie. A few weeks ago she decided that she wasn't going to sleep in the kitchen any more; to be fair, I think it's our own fault. Since Clover died we've been taking Beattie out and about with us much more; geocaching (which we haven't done for ages because of the cost of petrol), into the village to post a letter, coming camping with us. So because we've made her twilight years more interesting and fun-filled (you should see her bouncing arthritically when the boys are shut in the kitchen and I pick up her lead!) she's not so relaxed alone. Rather than have the kitchen door scratched to splinters we left it open so she had the choice of two dogbeds (hahaha!), the sofa and two armchairs in the warm sitting room. We weren't really happy about this because that's where the sofabed is that guests sleep on and the numbers of people who want to share their bed with someone else's elderly dog are limited. But we decided to cross that bridge when we came to it. Suffice that we were all sleeping happily.

Then last Saturday it all changed. The first change was when we'd all settled down for the night as usual but in the early hours Beattie woke us by barking furiously, over and over. This is something she's never done, not even when we were burgled. As a breed they're really very quiet, which is one of the things I like about them; I can't bear yappers. Anyway, Ned went down to check if anything was wrong (my hero!) while I watched out of the window for possible escaping misceants but there didn't seem to be anything untoward happening. Beattie was reassured and settled down again, and we all went back to bed.

On Sunday night (following a day when Ned had strained his back by not allowing me to help him carry a heavy box from the garage to the back of the car for mer to take to the tip, so that all week he's been using up all the out-of-date painkillers in the medicine cabinets), at about the same time, we were woken by Beetle giving a single "Woof!", then a pause to listen, then another "Woof!". This was a completely different sort of bark to the fusillade of the night before so I felt confident going to check her, Ned being unable to move, and found her standing in the hall, woofing at nothing. I settled her down again, covered her with her blanket in case she was cold, and went back to bed. This routine was repeated about every hour and a half throughout the night - I just had time to drift off to sleep again before the "Woof!" started up.

I was tired on Monday. Unfortunately I was even tireder on Tuesday because exactly the same thing had happened, and I began to suspect that she might have developed doggie dementia - one of the symptoms is night-time wandering and barking. There are various medications that can be treat it but they're not cheap and I'd rather avoid them if possible. Then I had a thought - she might just be lonely, because every time I went to settle her down again I'd sit on the sofa and she'd jump up beside me and cuddle up happily. The cure for loneliness is company - but I wasn't going to have her sleeping up with us because she takes up far too much room even when we're supple enough to curl around her. With Ned's bad back that wasn't possible. Another plan was called for. The next night, when she started up, I took her back into the kitchen, put her in her bed (this meant crawling under the table with her) covering her up snugly then letting the boys in from the utility room. It seemed to work - there wasn't another peep out of any of them.

And after one or two teething problems (like the boys not being able to agree who was going to sleep in which bed in the kitchen and making more noise about it than Beattie did in the first place) they now all share the kitchen in relative harmony. And we get to sleep through the night.