Obeying my dog

It's 4:55 a.m. and I've been up for about an hour, prodded out of a sound sleep by the incessant barking of my older dog, Ruthie.

Ruthie is having a difficult time with the chaos surrounding our move. Confined to her kennel, next to Pete in his, she barked pretty much nonstop all morning yesterday while the packers worked in the house.

I finally went to the vet's office and got some dog tranquillizers for her. We've used them before and a half of a tablet usually does the trick. The drug kicked in after about a half-hour and she was reasonably calm the rest of the day.

Then, about 3:30 a.m. today she started in, barking and yarking and clawing at her kennel door. I lay in bed hoping she'd calm down, but by 3:50 it was obvious that this was going to continue until I responded. So I got up and got dressed and took both dogs out to the back yard where they peed.

Now, I'm wide-freaking-awake, beginning what will be my last full day in this house as a continuous resident. I'll be back in a week or so to finish up the fix-up and clean-up work preliminary to putting the place on the market, but when I roll out of here with the dogs sometime around mid-day tomorrow, I will consider myself an Arkansas resident.