Dakota and my sleepless nights: a true story.

Rebecca has been gone for two weeks. Yes, that sounds like a long time and yes, it actually is a long time and yes, we miss her lots. But you want to know who really misses her? Like, so, so much?

Her dog. Her dog misses her so, so much.

Sean and I are doing our best to fill in the gaps for the poor, sad puppy. Each morning, I toss around his favorite toy duck for him to chase. Each evening, Sean and I take the dog for a long walk, where we end up carrying around a bag full of poop. I guess cleaning up our children’s poop just wasn’t enough; now we get to clean up the poop of one of our children’s pets…

As much as I detest carrying around that nasty little poop bag, there is something that is even worse that I have to do when Rebecca is gone: get up in the night with the dog. See, when Rebecca is home, the dog sleeps in his little crate in her room. Turns out, he won’t sleep in her room without her. So I put him in our room, thinking that would work. Two problems: first, he likes to see someone in the room as he's going to sleep, and he won’t sleep unless he is certain someone is in the room with him. Our bed is taller than Rebecca’s, so he can’t see that we’re there. Second, because he can't tell if someone is in the room, he roots around all night, straining to see if he can make out a human in his vicinity. He makes so much noise throughout the night that he wakes and keeps us up.

So I have resorted to putting his crate in our family room, facing the couch. And I then sleep on the couch.

Yes, people. I am sleeping on the couch so that the dog and Sean can get some sleep.

I have not been this tired since Rebecca was born and I was up in the night with her. A human child. Which was understandable. But now, I'm up in the night with a dog...

Am I counting down the days until Rebecca returns? Yes. Yes, yes, yes. Six more nights and I can finally get back to my own bed.

New Duffy rule: Rebecca may no longer leave the house for more than 16 hours. Ever.