this is your 5:45 am wake-up call...

[dragonlady7]

This message is, again, brought to you by Bert, oh She of the Must Poop Four Times In Two Hours If You Are Not Home. Oh, the pooping.

Bert has come into your bedroom to cry and pant and whine and tapdance on the laptop computer you put on the floor next to the bed when you went to sleep.

It is imperative, you see, that Bert awaken you. Immediately. Why?

The world is ending!
The world is ending!

This happens every few days, once or twice a week in the summer. First there's a few bright flashes, and some rumblings. Then it rains. The rumbling and flashing gets worse. The rain gets worse. It's just a horror of rumbling, flashing, and raining.

This, you see, is the artillery bombardment preceding the Apocalypse. The world is, right now, at this very moment, about to end.

And Bert is most anxious that you be warned.
Once she's dragged you out of bed (and taken a break to eat breakfast, because one always gets breakfast after one goes outside to pee in the mornings-- don't you?), she then must pace around the house (click click click click, quite loud, dog toenails on hardwood) whimpering and shivering, and the shivering overheats her so she pants, and the panting makes her drool.
And every time the lightning flashes she looks at it and then looks at you, plaintively, as though it were in your power to make it stop and you don't. Then the thunder comes (and it doesn't even have to be loud), and she shudders and cringes, and looks accusingly at you again.

You can pet her all you want, and croon to her, and try to soothe her. You can hold her, cover her ears, caress her, whisper to her, shush her, pet her, reason with her. None of it does any good. Because the world is ending, and you, you heartless person, you don't understand.

You can come downstairs and turn on the light and sit on the couch beside her and pet her and calm her, but that's not enough. She still has to pace the house, finding every person still asleep and awakening them to alert them to the fact that the world is ending. Regardless of the fact of what time of night it is, because the Apocalypse waits for no man.

Because she's just a nice girl, like that. Also, she hasn't noticed that this happens doezens of times a year, and yet the world hasn't ended. Just as someone always comes home after abandoning her forever, so the end of the world has never quite arrived.

But she's Bert the beagle, just doing her duty. Don't bother her with trifles!

...
Aw, crap, the thunder's worse now and has started doing the shaking the house and thumping thing. Maybe she's right.

Comments

[redstapler.livejournal.com]

Josie used to be inconsolable during storms.

My mom would open her closet door, and Josie would go in there and shake. After she'd run up to my mother, possibly peeing on the floor on her way there.

Everytime there's a thunder storm, my mom always says, "Geez, it's a good thing Josie's not alive to see this one..."

[dragonlady7.livejournal.com]

Awww.
Crap, it's raining again. (Just noticed.)

Chocolate, a German shorthair pointer, and thus not quite such a small dog, wasn't really fazed during thunderstorms, but fireworks drove her into a frenzy. She actually began having epileptic seizures every 4th of July, So, she was definitely one for the annual sedation.

Unfortunately, my parents live just across the Hudson River (a small river up that far) from Mechanicville, the home of a small but major fireworks manufacturer. The manufacturer, being local, supplies the local Italian festivals for cheap. So every freakin' saints' day, there'd be another spectacular fireworks display just above the treeline, courtesy of the guys who did the Atlanta Olympics.

Yeah.
The vet kinda looked at Mom funny when she asked for dog tranquilizers for the occasion of Ascension Sunday.