Australian stockmen were known to use their dogs to keep warm by curling up with them during the night to sleep. One dog would be used for a cool night, two dogs for cold and three dogs for bitterly cold (also referred to as “cold enough to freeze the balls off a brass monkey” – the origins of which are also open to debate but that’s for another time – maybe!). Hence, a three dog night meant an extremely cold one. For us, it’s been something completely different and much more literal.
While the weather in Sydney recently has been quite temperate we’ve had a series of three dog nights. As you’d know (see last week’s post – Families), Danita and I are once again living in two houses. This is because we committed to a month in one place before getting a long term house-sitting gig. To make this work effectively we’ve got one house for living and the other for our office.
This can have great benefits as discussed last week when we had family come to visit. The down side has been losing track of where our clothes are (“I know I had more socks than this”), what food we’ve got (“I’m sure we bought bread recently”) and so on. Overall though, it’s being a good experience.
However, there is one downside to the house we’re living in (as opposed to working in). It has two dogs and a cat. In principle that’s OK. We’re happy to look after animals (after all that’s usually the deal with house-sitting). The problem here is that the two dogs are used to sleeping on the owners’ bed.
For the first few nights, that worked out well. Danita, Sancho and I slept in one bedroom and the two house dogs had the master bedroom. Then they worked out that we were somewhere else and began to express their view of the situation rather strongly. This involved whining at the door which can wear down anybody’s resistance especially when it’s at 3am. Eventually (very quickly actually) we succumbed and we now share a double bed (not king or queen sized, but a double bed – who has double beds anymore??) with three dogs – Sancho and the two others.
If you’ve ever slept with dogs on your bed you’ll know they have an uncanny ability to take over the entire bed in a very surreptitious way. They start off lying lengthwise so everyone seems to fit reasonably comfortably. However, at some point during the night they move so that they are lying ACROSS the bed. Danita and I have been waking up in the middle of the night with about a quarter of the bed available for us with the rest taken over by dog bodies.
Now, if this was an above-mentioned ‘three dog night’ it could be quite pleasant. However, in the unseasonably warm weather we seem to be having, it can get pretty oppressive. Add to that menopausal hot flushes and things can get really heated (in lots of ways).
While this makes for interesting nights and resorting to bed hopping (without the interesting activities normally associated with that) we can’t really complain. Apparently, sleeping on the bed was a skill the other dogs originally learned from Sancho.
It seems that during one of his visits, quite some time ago, he would go to sleep in his bed and then climb up onto the master bed during the night. The dog living there at the time decided this was a worthwhile skill and so started to behave in the same way. When a new dog was introduced into the house she too learned the benefits of this skill. So, you could argue the current situation we find ourselves in is our karma.
We have another couple of weeks here and then we’ll be able to get back to having a bed we can spread out in.
BTW if, for you, Jeremiah is the name of a bullfrog you’re probably thinking about the other “Three Dog Night” and you’re showing your age.
And now for something completely different. You’ve got to be very careful with language. I had a call this week from a charity and I said I needed to check with my partner about which charities we’re supporting and how much we’re contributing. The caller immediately started to refer to my partner (Danita) as “he/him”. Now I must confess that if I’m feeling cheeky and want to confuse someone I do talk about “my partner Danny” – in Sydney, that can sometimes be a bit of a conversation stopper and the cause of some odd facial expressions on the part of the other person.