The house rule is this – if I have to get up and go down the stairs to let the dogs out before we go to bed, then the dogs have to go out. Blue and Blondie are old enough that they now fall fairly soundly asleep by 10 PM. And I do mean soundly. I have to practically stand over them screaming their name before an eye even twitches to indicate they are slowly realizing someone might be standing over them getting red in the face with effort. Why, you ask, don’t I shake them awake? Well, because I’m such a nice person that I don’t want to startle them. The few times I’ve put my hand on them to shake them awake, they have awaken with such a start that they fell off the couch.
Once I have their attention, I loudly announce that EVERYONE has to go out one last time. They both look at me like I’ve lost my mind. I go over to the stairs and go down a few. I stop, turn around and yell their names again. I wait. After a moment or so, I yell again. I hear them reluctantly partially get off the couch. Blondie especially has perfected the art of her feet on the ground while her butt is still on the couch as she looks towards the stairwell to see if I can possibly be serious about this.
Finally they come to the top of the stairs. I proceed to go down to the bottom landing. They stand at the top staring at me and thinking – I can only assume – that I called them over to watch me go downstairs and that I really didn’t expect them to go down also.
I order them down again in a sterner voice. They very slowly descend. We get to the backdoor. They go out. And they both pee for at least five minutes each, confirming in my mind that if I didn’t make them go out right before bedtime, I’d be getting up very soon after I fell asleep because they would suddenly have to go out immediately.
Once done, they slowly amble back to the door. Blue comes in and goes straight over to the bird cage to see if anything interesting has dropped since she started her evening nap that would make an appropriate midnight snack. Blondie follows behind Blue. As she walks past me, I close and lock the back door. I turn to go upstairs and find Blondie standing in front of me, head turned towards me with a look that says, “Are you finally happy? Did waking me up and making me get cold give you your jollies for the night? Because you can rest assured that for every night you wake me up to go out in the hope I will let you sleep late in the morning, I promise I will wake you up very early in the morning to go out again. You wake me up. I wake you up.”
Who would have ever thought that dogs had such a refined sense of tit for tat?