It's 4:00 in the morning...

...do you know where your puppy is?

Yes, I do. She's downstairs in the kitchen barking very quietly to let me know she has to go out to the grass as soon as I can get my sleepy self down the stairs.

Four o'clock seems to be the designated puppy-hour of the morning in this house. Savannah has consistently barked in the early morning hours to be let out, except for the first two or three nights she was here and I think only sheer exhaustion from her previous life plus her car-trip up here led to those initial nights of solid sleep.

When Savannah was getting quite comfortable here, knowing full well that this was her home and she wasn't going back to her old puppy life, she was very vocal during the night: barking and roaring to let us know that she heard every blessed sound from either inside the house or outside on the property.  Those bark-filled nights ended when I took her to the vet's to get her spayed. Either the spaying calmed her down a bit, or her puppy mind was thinking that we took her to the vet because of all that barking. (I really don't think dogs are capable of such cognitive thinking, but it does sound brilliant, doesn't it?) Actually, not putting Savannah into the crate at night probably did a lot to end that night-time barking... clearly, she was getting too big for that crate and I know she's happy to be able to stretch out and sleep wherever she likes in the kitchen and/or breakfast room.

I truly believe that Savannah has gotten used to all the usual sounds of our home and the property. She isn't barking in the middle of the night when she hears an armadillo out under the bushes, and I know that for a fact because I can see the armadillo holes in the morning so I've no doubt that they were out there digging in the moonlight. And the trains still run along the tracks in the next town every night, followed by the howling of the coyotes, and Savannah has ignored those sounds as well this past week.

One sound that Savannah does not appreciate is our goat-raising neighbor from across the road. When he yells out to his livestock in Spanish, Savannah's ears perk up, her facial expression goes from smiling to serious, and she turns herself right around and will not walk further down the hill towards that neighbor's property. Of course, I'm thinking back to her previous life now, and the two women that we met when we got Savannah were a mother and daughter, both Mexican.... so most likely the husband and/or father in that family was Mexican as well. Therein could be the piece of the puzzle as to why Savannah does not feel comfortable with men. And in her puppy mind, a Mexican man who might have yelled at her in Spanish is no different than our male friends up here, as well as my husband, all of whom fall into Savannah's puppy catalog of 'men.'

Needless to say, our friends have not yelled at Savannah, and neither has my husband. And except for the goat-raising neighbor, no one else up here in our very contained community happens to be Mexican. It doesn't take Sherlock Holmes to conclude that the Mexican man in her previous life was the crux of Savannah's fear and hesitation around all men.

But... back to four o'clock in the morning. At that time, I hear one or two very low barks coming up from the kitchen and I know that I can either ignore them (at which point they will probably get much louder) or I can get myself out of bed and down the stairs and take Savannah out the back door. I've been choosing the latter option. On go the slippers, down the stairs I come (very slowly, as I'm still just barely awake and we've already discussed my not wanting to be a heap at the bottom of the stairs) and Savannah greets me with a wagging tail and a big smile when I get down to the kitchen.  I turn on the outside lights, then the slippers come off and the shoes go on, the leash and collar go on Savannah, and out the door we go... me, Savannah, and the big flashlight.

What usually happens is that Savannah will take advantage of the grass right along the courtyard by the back stairs. (And that's when I smile, because I don't have to walk any further.) But there are those four o'clock calls of nature that have Savannah pulling me towards the grass along the driveway because she needs more options of greenery. That's where the flashlight comes in handy... I shine the light along the concrete driveway to make sure nothing is going to surprise me out there, and then I walk along the edge of that driveway while Savannah is walking in the grass. Usually, she truly needs that little bit of extra walking and extra grass.... and those are the times when I'm out there saying "Good girl, Savannah, good girl!"  But then we have nights when Savannah plays her 'How many leaves can I pick up?" game.... and she walks along in the grass, picking up leaves that have fallen from the pecan trees, and with each leaf, I'm telling her "Drop it! Savannah! Drop it!"  And, lo and behold, she does indeed drop the leaf, but only to pick up another one. By the fourth leaf and the fourth "Drop it!" I know she has just been playing with me and it's time to go back into the house.

And Savannah does indeed go back to sleep after her under-the-stars outing... and the other day she slept till 7:45, and blessedly, so did I.  In time, this middle-of-the-night adventure out on the lawn will cease and Savannah will sleep through the night. And so will I, of course.

I had to throw away Savannah's original blue monkey toy this morning. The tail of that poor monkey had been taken off by Savannah's constant chewing on it, so it was already disfigured, poor thing. But then she got started chewing on one of the monkey's ears and very quickly, that little blue ear was in the middle of the kitchen floor. When I showed the monkey to my husband, he told me it was The Van Gogh Monkey.  My response should have been "Well, it's the Van Gone Monkey now," but I was laughing too hard at his joke at the time and trying not to let Savannah see me putting that dismembered monkey into the trash can.

So into the trash went the first blue monkey, and out from the Walmart sack came one of the 'extra' blue monkeys that my husband had bought for Savannah. Honestly, I could swear this puppy knew that the second monkey was indeed a brand new one because she sniffed it very seriously when I gave it to her, then she carried it into the TV room (prancing all the way) and then she rolled around on the floor with it as if we had given her the Keys to The Puppy Kingdom.

The Puppy Kingdom? Any house with a puppy in it quickly becomes the domain of that puppy, and this house is no exception.