The Good Kind of Exhausted

I had a four day weekend from work, which meant a lot of time catching up on chores around the house and some extra special time with the pups. I may have said this before, or if I haven’t I think it all the time-I am at my very happiest when my dogs are happy.

It is an odd psychological symbiosis in that I truly believe my dogs and I need each other to survive. It isn’t always mutually beneficial, also a definition of symbiotic relationships (usually when it comes to me needing to sleep past sunrise), but in general, our lives are made better for the sharing of them. And I must admit, if I am being really honest, that I often prefer the company of my dogs to the company of most humans. Their needs are not veiled, thinly or otherwise, they are not begging for anything more than the very exacting and specific belly rub they are asking for. I don’t have to read between their furry/fuzzy/slobbery lines. They come just as they are and they expect me to come just as I am, whatever that may mean on any given day (as long as I still cuddle the same way). But I digress…

 

“They were definitely high on life.”

Chores turned to an actual weekend of rest and relaxation: This weekend was lovely. We visited family in a coastal retreat that was basically crack for dogs-brambles and bushes and pathways and hidey-holes and other dogs roaming free. They were soaked with rain and dew and leftover leaf guts, Barnaby tracking every errant limb within his own tail as though he himself was becoming a bramble-on-the-move. They ran for hours. They were lovely and happy and smiling. They were definitely high on life.They even played with children, which is kind of rare.

As an aside, Barn and Wes both received baths that took a double shampooing. After they were clean and dry, my dogs, my loving, follow me anywhere shadows…They did not move from the couch for the rest of the day. Normally, anytime I leave the couch to use the restroom or to grab a glass of water or to change the laundry or to open a door or to pick up fluff from the ground, they gladly and openly jump from their comfortable positions to trail behind me…but not this time. This time they were physically incapable, mentally uninterested. They were the good kind of exhausted. The best kind in fact. The kind that meant they lived, and I lived, and they were happy. Not bad for a four day weekend, chores and all.