The Dogs of Winter
Matt is working late with the salmon season tonight and boy, the dogs are restless. They don't like it much when one or the other of us is away from home outside the normal routine.
Grover has been staring out the screen door for half the night, which would be fine if he wouldn't burst into spontaneous barking every time an ant walked across the patio. Cody (aka Codypendent) stares out the screen door as well, but punctuates his angst with extended sessions of high-frequency whining. The whining is just audible, which actually makes it twice as annoying as normal whining.
It doesn't help that Matt takes the role of The Fun Human, whereas I more of a hands-off dog manager. That's not an effective strategy with Springer spaniels, nor with any other variety of spaniel if I understand them correctly. Basically they're slightly less neurotic than a Cocker spaniel, the dogs most likely to bite their owners and who inevitably wee-wee on the carpet if you look at them even remotely fondly. For our dogs, this means that Cody has bonded so completely to Matt that he can't abide being out of sight of his master. He'll go off his feed for days if Matt has to be out of town. Grover paces. He rambles through the house. He patrols the perimeter for intruders. (He just started barking again.) He drives me up a friggin' wall.
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