the sheltiechick blog

I just want to be close to you

Last night we had a thunderstorm so bad it actually woke me up through my earplugs (an unusual occurrence) and Auggie, who sleeps in a bed on my bedroom floor now, asked to climb into my bed.  He’s too short to get on my bed unless he gets a really enthusiastic running start, so if Auggie wants in my bed, he hops up and put his front paws on the bed, sticks his face in mine if I’m unlucky enough to be sleeping on my right side, and stares at me.
Auggie is not afraid of thunder – the most he reacts is to bark when the rumbling vibrates the windows, and that’s a reaction to the glass rattling, not the thunder itself.  So the thunder was pretty loud to have distressed him enough that he wanted in the bed with me.  I picked him up and put him on my bed, and he immediately curled up at the foot of the bed with his chin on my leg.  He wanted to be touching me.  But this was apparently not enough, because after a few minutes he got up and climbed up to the top of the bed.  I rolled over and put my arm around him, and he curled up next to me, snuggled into my belly.  I love Auggie and I wish he were a cuddly boy, but on the whole, he’s not cuddly (staying still is boring and being restrained in a cuddle or a hug means he has to stay still; therefore being cuddled is objectionable), so laying down to sleep cuddled into me with my arm around him is definitely not the norm.  He wasn’t shaking or anything, but he was definitely an unhappy boy with all the thunder.

Unfortunately, the cuddliness only lasted until the thunder stopped.  A few minutes after the thunder stopped, he got up and moved back to the end of the bed and curled up against the wall to sleep.  Boo.
He did, however, stay on my bed the rest of the night.  Most nights if he starts on my bed, he ends up on the floor after a while – either because he gets too hot, or he starts walking all over me and I put him on the floor because I don’t take well to having him walk all over me while I’m trying to sleep.  So he was apparently slightly alarmed and wanted to stay closer to me than usual.

My mom is working early hours in the summer, so she came to get him early in the morning to feed him and play with him before she went to work.  I watched him get off my bed and then rolled over to try for another hour or so of sleep, since I hadn’t slept that great.  When she left for work, she closed Auggie into the kitchen and the office where his crate is – I just figured he was actually in his crate rather than loose in the other room.  So when I got up and went to the bathroom to get ready for work, I was first surprised to hear a scratch on a door across the house… and before I could get to the other side of the house and let him out, I heard a loud WHUMP as he apparently launched himself at the door trying to get to me.

I guess it’s flattering that my dog is so obsessed with being close to me that he tries to bodily break down doors separating us..?