The Chronicles of a Dog Sitter

This is a live chronicle of my night babysitting 4 dogs.

The oldest of the four dogs is fed up with them, he is too old for this s#*!, even though he is only like a year older than the puppies. I do get him; the girls can take a lot out of you, I mean they are puppies but what he doesn’t remember is that he used to be the same way. The only difference was that he was the only dog at that time, now there are four. He is not the center of attention anymore.

He truly grew up to be a pretty exceptional dog; sits, comes, stays and stops when you tell him to. I know that’s not really exceptional, just well-behaved but if you saw him when he was a puppy you would say this is a different dog.

So anyway, back to my chronicle, they were all really riled up and he was really annoyed. He was even angry-barking so I decided to separate him from the rest. We have been doing this when he needs his space, we take him out of the living/dining room where the rest of the dogs are and put him in the hallway where he has access to the kitchen and any room we leave open. In this case it was my room where there is a wee wee pad and his crate. I also brought him his food and water bowls.
If you think separating him from the rest is cruel I’m going to say it’s not; cruel is leaving him on the living room being almost harassed by my puppies.

When he felt he wanted to come to the living room to be with the other dogs, I lifted the door and let him out but less than five minutes out there and they were already driving him crazy so I had to “lock him up” again.

All of the sudden there was some sort of explosion nearby, the dogs went crazy but I just saw some smoke like 6 blocks away. I thought maybe it was fireworks but I didn’t hear or see anything else. When the rest of them calmed down Robin was barking, at first I didn’t get it, why was he barking? The other dogs weren’t doing anything but he just wanted me to let him out. I waited a little while because I didn’t want it to turn into a game. Then I think it started to turn into a game for them because Robin started asking to be out with the others again.

When I did let him out, I think they were already bored of all the fighting or tired because they were all pretty calm. Robin laid in a corner, Lego walked around, Indi was chewing a toy and Sandy want from chewing on the same toy as Indi to walking around the apartment like Lego.

I was a little nervous they were going to turn the apartment upside down because I had never been alone with the four of them, just Sandy and Indi, Lego and Robin or just Robin.

At about 8:15 pm all of them were almost asleep, except Lego who just walked around the apartment. As dogs have better ears than human and hear everything, every time there was anyone in the hallway outside the apartment, they went to the door to bark.

As they did this I tried to tell them to stop, while trying not to let my ice-cream melt. I would take a spoon-full of ice-cream, “no!” Another spoon-full of ice-cream, “stop!

As I sent my cousin a snapchat about dog sitting four dogs alone, the three of them on the couch started fighting.

It was only 8:30 pm and I felt like it was just too late to still be awake, but since everyone is pretty much knocked out I appreciate the peace and quiet to wash the dishes. Robin, the faithful canine that he is, follows you everywhere so he followed me to the kitchen and laid there on the floor as I did the dishes. When I was done, I started to hear movements from the others three beasts who got their energy back and restarted their game of chasing each other around the apartment.

It was about 9:00 pm when I decided it was way past their bedtime, they had started doing what they do when they’re tired but don’t want to go to sleep, start fighting for no reason. It’s not like real fighting or play fighting, it’s just like nagging the other one so she’ll fight back and keep her awake. They were so tired it was easy to get them to go in their playpen/bed and quickly fell asleep.

Getting Robin and Lego in my room, where their crates were, was no trouble either, they just followed me there. Lego went directly to his crate and didn’t come out again, even though the light was still on and I did not close it until later. Robin was still eating and walking around wherever I was, getting ready for bed.

It was a very interesting night, which gave me a lot of confidence knowing that I can survive taking care of all four dogs for a while. I was able to write, eat, watch TV, wash the dishes and the dogs didn’t destroy anything like I was afraid they would.