I often lose sleep. I doze on and off throughout the night. Just like every parent out there, the kids are the primary reason. Bad dreams, colds, the boogie-man, and the occasional “Mom, I had to pee,” or even worse, wetting the bed. It happens A LOT and with three kids the probability of being woken up by 1:30am is pretty good.

Nine years ago I became a mom for the first time. A doggie-mom that is. Avery was my first boy. My love. I had never had a dog before. I was never allowed a dog before. Now I was an adult and my fiance at the time suggested we get a dog. We became the parents of a beautiful Vizsla we named “Avery.” Avery is sweet, gentle, and highly neurotic. He has to have a blanket on him when he sleeps. He whines and whines and stomps his paws until his needs have been met. As he has gotten older he whines even more. He was diagnosed with mass cell tumors, but is still kicking like a trooper and playing with the kids.

Mr. Avery was the culprit of sleep deprivation last night. The poor thing. He was whiney, he was restless, and he destroyed my dining room floor. So I spent 3:30am to 4:15am washing floors. The poor dog looked absolutely mortified. I then spent the remaining two hours I had before the dreadful alarm laying in bed thinking about Avery. He’s getting old, he’s sick, is this it? I don’t know how we’re going to make it through the transition when the time comes. So I have been up since 3:30am just worrying. All parents worry, be it for their human children or their pets. I worry how our other dog will react. She’s a nut-case. She scratched through the aluminum door last time we took Avery to the vet. Will she die of a broken heart like in Where The Red Fern Grows? Most of all I worry about the boys. How will they react. Although I was once told that, “when my dogs go to heaven we can get an alligator.” Then there was, “when my dogs go to heaven we can get two cats and name them Al and Gracie.” I have this gut feeling that the time is looming and I’m sad. My First Boy.

Oh, and if someone out there knows of a product that can disinfect hardwoods without stripping the finish, please tell me.