One plaintive bark

I woke up on Friday morning to one plaintive bark. Not a frantic bark or frantic barking. Not a whine. It was just one bark, in the hallway outside our bedroom.

We have three rescued Australian Cattledogs. The third one, like in so many families, was an “accident”. She was supposed to be a foster and she WAS a foster. We adopted her out once but she got returned to us ten days later and she’s been ours for keeps for nearly two years now. She’s a bit jittery sometimes. She’s more hyper than the other two and she’s still pretty young. Hubby won’t let her sleep in the bedroom, he says she twitches; she kinda does twitch.

She’s definitely the one I wanted to be ambivalent about; I didn’t want to love her, she was just “the third dog”. That plan failed.

She tries harder, I swear she does. She’s funnier, sillier and more sincere than the other two.

That one plaintive bark said, “mom, I want you to get up. The sun is up, I’m a cattledog and get up with the sun…and I probably have to go potty; so mom, will you please get up?” It was such an honest communication. No human has ever communicated as simply and sincerely as my little girl did at 5:34 Friday morning.

Maybe we’re learning though. Just maybe us humans are figuring out who our teachers are. This story in USA Today says that there are now more households with dogs than with kids. I’m one of them. I was shocked to find out that there were more like me. Wow, what does it all mean?

Who cares? I love it.

I don’t love 5:34AM so much but when it comes with that sweet little “WOOF” I guess it sounds a bit like a love song. Secretly I’m looking forward to that next little morning “WOOF”, it reminds me of how good life is. Smart dog.