contagious

On Friday I noticed that I had a bit of vertigo. Stange, I thought, because usually I would get it immediately after flying, not days later. At the rugby union dinner I was starting to feel dizzy but I was also enjoying the fermented grape juice. By Saturday morning I was flat on my back with a sore throat and chills. By Saturday evening SB woke me up because I was burning up and he was concerned. I ended up in the emergency room by Sunday morning. I promised to stay in bed and take my antibiotics if the doctor would please not admit me so by Sunday afternoon I was lolling in bed while my two bored dogs ran in circles around the bedroom and whimpered in confusion as to why I wasn't playing with them. SB had other commitments and he's such a wretched nursemaid that it was a relief to be alone. During my last big illness his attempts to be helpful while trying to pick up groceries and pharmacy goods led to incessant phone calls while I was trying to sleep.

My staying in bed all day experience led me to realize why that freaking dog next door is so awful. Well, actually I had my suspicions so this was more like confirmation. During 48 hours of my strep throat infection I was so weak, feverish and miserable that I could do no more than take the dogs out to do their business and go right back in. On Monday when I was feeling marginally better, I could only manage one nice walk because they were not interested in walking in the evening when it was pouring down rain. As a result, the monsters were bored, bored, bored. This led them to bark at random crap such as the wind blowing. No, really; they barked when a gust of wind blew past. They stalked me and whimpered for me to wake up and play every half hour or so. I felt like the biggest toad for not being able to play. Then Elsie chewed a hole in her dog bed while I was unconscious and scattered the stuffing all over the living room.

Gosh, I thought, other than the first weeks when we trained them to know which things they could chew, this had never happened before. Then a light bulb went on. Our furbabies usually get a lot more exercise than they had in the past few days. Apparently sitting around a home all day and doing nothing causes boredom in animals. Apparently bored animals will find ways to entertain themselves that do necessarily meet the approval of human adults. So then, as I was re-stuffing and patching the pillows, I thought about that horrible neighbor dog and how I have never seen it and how all it does is bark all day and sometimes all night too, and...wait a minute! If I have not seen hide nor hair of this dog, that probably means that it never leaves its home. If it barks all night, the owners are probably not home that night. So basically, dogs that are left home all day (and night) are bored and miserable and will act up. How interesting.

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