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I was pretty tired yesterday. It was my dog’s fault. You see the night before I got up several times in the middle of the night to let him outside. His incessant whining was driving me crazy. “Patches”, as he is affectionately known because of his dapple spots, was supposed to be sleeping in his crate but this dog was not happy about something. He let me know throughout the night by whining almost non stop. When Patches whines in the middle of the night it usually means one of two things: he is sick or he needs to be let outside to go potty.

To add to the insanity we now have a fox that is roaming our backyard from time to time. So it’s not as easy as just “letting the dog out.” No, I have to hook Patches up to his thirty foot leash, open the door and keep an eye out for a hungry fox trying a sneak attack on my wild wiener dog while he is taking care of business. To be honest there have been times where I have let him outside without a leash on and he has started running around and barking like crazy, which can wake up neighbors and, shall we say. make them less open to the gospel. What’s worse is that when this happens me and the Fruit of the Loom guys end up chasing him all around the backyard.

I pray my neighbors are deep sleepers.

Anyway, this particular night our dog was jumping on my last nerve. He had already awakened me two separate times to let him out and it was only 2 in the morning. I was getting frustrated. But he kept whining. His whine was weirder than normal. It was slightly more high pitched than usual, almost like an off pitch, quiet whistle. Finally, I went downstairs, slapped the top of his crate and yelled, “BAD DOGGIE!” But since I was already downstairs and didn’t want to come down again, I went to my last resort, I let him out of his crate so that he could sleep by our gas-powered fireplace. This usually works. Patches loves to curl up by the fire and sleep.

As I went back upstairs and climbed into bed I remember thinking to myself, “If I were placing a bet in Vegas right now on Patches whining again I’d put all my chips on red for yes.” And, sure enough, just as I was about to fall asleep, I heard that high slight whine, that quiet, consistent whistle that was driving me crazy. I snapped. I had enough. I ran down the stairs, charged straight at Patches and gave him a firm swat on the rear and yelled “BAD DOGGIE!” I’ll never forget him turning around and looking at me like, “What did I do?” I just lectured him with these simple sentences, “No more whining! You are a BAD DOG!”

As I nestled into bed for the fourth time that night I began to pray, “Please God, I need some sleep. Let my dog stop whining.” But right then I began to hear it. That slight whistley whine. My heart began to pound harder and I started breathing faster. Then something wierd happened I noticed that Patches was whining faster too. The faster I breathed the more he whined. And then I realized what was happening. It wasn’t Patches making the whining noise. It was me. The whining noise was my whining nose. The boogers in my right nostril had created some kind of nasaly whistle that sounded strangely like my dog whining.

So I would like to take this opportunity to publicly apologize to my dog and to blow my nose.

Bad booger!