Below Freezing Best Friend

Our dog could definitely be considered our family's best friend.  I think she likes every one of us, possibly being the most sensitive to my daughter's mental state.  She comes any time my daughter is upset and calls to her, letting my daughter cover her with her small, child's body while she wails, getting over whatever physical or mental insult she's sustained.

Both my son and daughter are good about letting the dog outside in the mornings.  Typically this is done by my daughter who gets up before the rest of us.   My husband, son and I are happy sleeping in and have to be roused by alarms to get up on school days.  

Both my son and daughter understand it's not fair to the dog to come into our bedroom in the morning where they are greeted by a happy dog who would like to go outside so she can relieve herself now that parts of the family is awake.   My son wasn't that into helping but we appealed to him, asking if he had to go to the bathroom in the morning, how would he like it if we told him he had to wait another hour or to before he was allowed.

It is common that by the time I'm up, my daughter has let the dog out and then brought her back in again.  This morning I got up to find my youngest child eating a pastry at the bar with her bottle of water beside her, listening to a story on the Amazon Echo beside her seat.

I asked her when she had let the dog out and was startled when she said, "oh, three o'clock, I think?  It was a while ago."   Seeing as it was twenty-four degrees at the time I exclaimed my alarm and worry about the dog and my daughter revised her story to say it was actually around five a.m.   It was after seven at this point which meant the dog had been out in sub-zero temperatures for at least two hours.

I ran outside to check on the dog, who happily greeted me as usual.   I bent down to check her and felt frozen saliva on her beard.   She wasn't upset or cold it would seem and came in as though nothing untoward had happened.  She loves cold weather and doesn't like coming in when it's nice and chilly outside.   It would seem she likes colder weather than we realized.

I still admonished the children to not leave her outside for long if it was near or below freezing.   They know how to ask Alexa for the temperature—they do so regularly to figure out the best clothing to wear for the day.   Yet again, Alexa helps and enables our family (and dog) in ways we never would have anticipated.

The Big Boy Update:  Blake picked my son up today after school and took him rock climbing.   I haven't seen them yet and it's dinner time.  I like that my son's school encourages social experiences after school instead of lots of homework.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  When asked recently if my daughter would want her sight back, she surprisingly said she didn't want to have her sight back.   Then she paused and added, "well, a little."  So she doesn't see her life as having a possibility of vision.  She does value the slight vision she has though.   As I was writing this, my daughter was in the middle of her music lesson.   She was in the basement apparently putting on a play.   She ran upstairs and I helped her find her Elsa dress and then ran back downstairs to keep working on the play.