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August 12, 2015

Waking Up With Dogs

At night Eko and Penny sleep in their super-double-beds below our baseboard.  When I say “Get to your bed!” the pups know we’re turning in for the night And thankfully they’re both expert sleepers Somewhat by accident I’ve trained the pups to only wake
At night Eko and Penny sleep in their super-double-beds below our baseboard. Rhodesian Ridgeback, puppy, chicago, cute, dog bed

When I say “Get to your bed!” the pups know we’re turning in for the night

Rhodesian Ridgeback, puppy, chicago, cute, dog bed

And thankfully they’re both expert sleepers

Somewhat by accident I’ve trained the pups to only wake up to the alarm clock of my voice. Specifically when I say “Gooooood morning baby dogs!”

It’s a good trick for keeping the pups in bed when Emily wakes up at 4am for work. Instead of popping up and begging Emily for an early breakfast, Eko and Penny know to catch a few extra z’s.

But the Will-alarm clock occasionally malfunctions and sometimes the pups feel compelled to take matters into their own paws. I know that’s the case when I wake up with the feeling I’m being watched. I’ll slowly turn my head towards the baseboard and inevitably see this:

Rhodesian Ridgeback, puppy, chicago, cute, dog bed

“Well, hello there Will”

I pretend I don’t see the pups, but there’s no fooling them.

Rhodesian Ridgeback, puppy, chicago, cute, dog bed

“Penny, Operation ‘Be Too Cute To Ignore” is a go. Head to phase two.”

What’s phase two, you ask?

Rhodesian Ridgeback, puppy, chicago, cute, dog bed

Penny puts the edge of her head on the bed and lays on the puppy-dog charm

Rhodesian Ridgeback, puppy, chicago, cute, dog bed

Eko then adds some nice deep breaths on my face

At this point, both the dogs and I know they’ve won. There’s no delaying the day. Even if it’s a little early or I’m a little tired, I can’t help but start the day with a smile when I have these two waiting for me.

Rhodesian Ridgeback, puppy, chicago, cute, dog bed

“Morning, sunshine!”

Eko and Penny will sleep through anything, except for breakfast!

What’s your morning routine with your pups?

Comments for Waking Up With Dogs

  1. I agree with you, to pretend to sleep is a mission impossible :o) Easy sniffs on my nose first and if I’m really strong enough to ignore it, he gives me some paw pats… before he starts to scream in my ear with his bestest falsetto voice :o)

  2. John says:

    My first Ridgeback – Woody (a very distant relative to Eko) once sat on my face to wake me up. That was VERY effective but it only happened once since he received some negative feedback LOL

  3. Jack sleeps in the room with us, but Maggie sleeps in the office. As they get older, they tend to sleep in and sometimes Steve actually has to wake them up for breakfast before he leaves for his run.

  4. Well, first you have to understand that Eddie the Grump and Gracie Allen are very aptly named. Eddie sleeps curled up in a ball against my stomach; nobody moves or the inevitable growls issue out from waaay under the covers. Gracie and I stop moving, stop breathing … whew, that was close! Gracie sleeps on top of my head. Yep, every night since her short self moved in. She, if possible, has the scarier growl. Partly because it actually sounds like a WILD ANIMAL is not happy. If you’re at all familiar with George Burns and Gracie Allen (see, told you about the name thing), Gracie Allen literally had the highest, loudest, most piercing voice, and she was less than 5′ tall-WAY LESS, and oh, lucky me, so does Ms Gracie Allen, the little chi. Just imagine, in the dead of the night the Guardian of the River Styx is not only awake, but REALLY MAD. We submit, because the difference between Eddie and Gracie is Gracie DOES NOT GIVE IN til we’ve all settled in. Sometimes, usually when I have to be to work early, Gracie decides at 3:30-4:00 AM, FOR GOD’S SAKE, that it’s time to play. 20 min later … finally. As soon as the alarm clock goes off Eddie is out of bed and yelling for food, bathroom, pets, whatever. Gracie never moves. We leave her alone. Have to admit, by the time I have gotten to work I am FULLY AWAKE and annoying everyone who is still tired. Works for me.

  5. Victoria says:

    Rigs, bless his heart, will sleep as long as i do. Muffin gives me a nose nudge and if that doesn’t work she licks my face and if both of those don’t work a paw to the head – gently at first and then with a little more force. fortunately i usually wake on the face lick

  6. I’m an early riser – Sam sleeps in the living room at night so his “cue” is when I come down the stairs to make coffee……then it’s all “ME ME ME ME ME ME ME” from him until he gets his breakfast, special hugs, and fresh water………..THEN I make coffee and our day begins.

    Pam

  7. Marcela says:

    Lol. Waking up to see such beautiful furry kids will surely put a smile on your face. What a lucky pet parent you are Will.

  8. Aida says:

    Love your blog & how You adore your fur babies….

    Aida Flamm

    Sent from my iPhone

    >

  9. Abbie says:

    Oh my goodness look at that adorable Penny face! I couldn’t resist either, if I were you; I’m a sucker when it comes to cute puppy faces asking me for something…even if it is get up before I wanted/planned to. And being awakened by a dog is the best way to wake up, IMO. 😀

  10. derrycats says:

    Try having not only two dogs who are happy to be up early, but 7 cats to feed, all of whom rise with the sun! Sleeping late in our house, means you got to sleep until 6:15.

  11. Neeka and Khoi sleep with us. On the bed. In very specific places. We know who wakes up first. Khoi. Like clockwork (how do they that?). First priority is to go outside, take care of business, smell every animal trail that passed through their property (2.5 acres); all before 5:30. Neeka, of course, wants breakfast waiting for her, but Khoi will make sure he didn’t miss anything outside. Breakfast will still be there. After a short mad minute after food, it’s back to bed for a couple hours. Naturally, we don’t get that luxury. We have to work to feed them.

  12. those photos are too darling!! My husband allows an awful routine. Cody starts waking everyone up around 3:30am or 4am. Unfortunately since my husband caters to this it continues. Thankfully he gets up and feeds Cody and Dakota (once Cody starts, then Dakota starts barking), I can sleep through anything. My husband will go right back to bed after feeding them. He’s crazy to allow this, but as long as it is him getting up with them at that hour and not me, that’s fine!

  13. Emmadog says:

    We never wake up Mom because she always gets up way too early for us, so she wakes us up. Kitty sis Sophie actually wakes everyone up. We think she recognizes a change in Mom’s breathing when she is awake as even though her eyes stay closed, Sophie starts meowing and trying to get Mom out of bed. Luckily we are happy to be an early riser family.

  14. Anna Hidalgo says:

    As an incurable non-morning person, I’m forever thankful that my dog Polo is so “polite” in the mornings. He sleeps on the bed, but only wakes me up if he’s having a pee/poop/puke emergency, which is very rare. If he wakes up before the alarm, he entertains himself by walking to the window to look out at the action below, or going to his crate for some morning grooming. Lucky me!

    If Polo ever found out he could get me out of bed by making those cute Eko/Penny puppy faces on the bedspread … I’d be toast.

  15. Me says:

    These photos are some of the cutest I have ever seen 🙂

  16. Wendy says:

    Love the photos of Eko and Penny’s beautiful doggie faces inching ever closer…

    My dogs sleep in their crates in the living room and Curdie will scratch on the wire door if he thinks it’s time to get up. His biggest contribution to the morning routine however is a bravura performance of howling/yodelling along with the alarm on my mobile phone. My sister in law tells me that Curdie’s performance is a protest against my use of a Mozart symphony as an alarm. I’m not so sure but I always enjoy a bit of “Sheltie singing” in the morning.

  17. kimberlygauthier says:

    I absolutely love this post. Every single post is better than the last. This is turning into my daily Happy Place – LOL. I’m a cheeseball.

  18. Genevieve says:

    Such good doggies – waiting as long as they can, and then making it happen. So smart. Cupcake has her first treat in bed when I get up and bring my cup of tea and a cookie for her back to bed. We say our prayers and watch the news for a while. She waits patiently in bed till I take my shower and get dressed, then I have to chase her into the living room so I can make the bed. I wonder if I didn’t chase her if she’d just sleep all day…..

  19. Joan says:

    Sadie has more of a before wake up routine. At night she starts out in her cage and as the night progresses she will move to the couch and then on to each of my kids beds (they are all grown and out of the house) kind of like Goldie Locks. By the time we wake in the morning she is back in her cage like nothing happened.

  20. Kismet says:

    Our peeps wake up when Kaci starts licking their faces and Kali starts walking on them.

  21. fredrieka says:

    I am a good girl I only get up when Momwithoutpaws says Come on Fred let’s go pee

  22. Jess says:

    Lucky for me, my boy likes to sleep in. He will sleep through my shower, through getting ready for work, and only gets out of bed when I put my purse on. He knows it’s time to go downstairs because I will be leaving to work soon. On the weekends though, he does what your two do, he puts his head on my bed pleading with his eyes for me to wake up. They always win, don’t they. 🙂

  23. Our last dog, Abraham, was great at the chin resting on the bed stare down. He’d add a little whimper and shuffle his feet a bit. But once I was up, the routine was set: outside to do business, his breakfast, find the hidden milkbone, chew on a Nylabone while Mom does her exercises, hang out in the bathroom while Mom does her hair, vacate the bathroom when the hairspray bottle comes out, then wait patiently for blueberries when Mom has her cereal. (Yes, I’m Mom.) I miss him in the mornings, but I’m learning a new routine, yet to be finalized, with our rescue pup, Roxy.

  24. realappetite says:

    Like most Ridgebacks, Atlas is a pro at sleeping. Around 6ish he lets us know he’s up with a (very loud) shake of the ears, soon followed by a whimper. Then he’ll walk around to whichever side of the bed he sees a face at and patiently wait for one of us to wake up. The best part is after breakfast, he is ready for his post-breakfast nap so whoever took him out gets to curl back up on the couch downstairs for lots of snuggles — all 70lbs of him. Definitely the best part of my day!

  25. harrispen says:

    Walter has an incredible internal alarm clock and almost never lets us sleep past 8am. Millie on the other hand would probably let us sleep until noon if we wanted to. Since we let our pups sleep on the bed with us Walter just starts sitting up and staring at us until we give in.

  26. hahaha this was cute. Mine would not sleep on their own beds they would be in mine.

  27. That ‘morning sunshine’ photo is too priceless. That look should be enough to get anyone outa bed. 😉

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