This is how weather.com has looked for what seems like ages now. When I check the local forecast, a little rain cloud is usually what I see. Sometimes there’s a streak of lightening in it, too.
Last month, we got 16.97 inches of rainfall. Our typical average for the month is 5.49 inches. I’m not good at math but even I understand that was a LOT of rain.
It’s falling outside my window right now. It’s not all bad. I love going to sleep when it’s raining. We haven’t had to water the grass, and it’s looking lush and green. The rain gives me an excuse to keep my beach floats on the front porch. I left them there after returning from my beach trip, too lazy to put them in the garage. When Lee mentioned them tonight I told him they were being kept there for our safety. If it floods, we can use them to float away.
But at the same time, the rain can be a nuisance when it’s constant. The worst part of it by far is it’s affect on Millie. When it’s sunny outside, she can spend the day in the backyard while we’re at work. When its raining, we need to keep her inside, but have to crate her because otherwise she’ll destroy the house ten seconds after we shut the door behind us.
She HATES the crate. On rainy mornings, she often paces and cries while I get ready for work, because she knows she’ll have to go in the crate. I feel badly for her. I take her outside to do her business, and she shakes and tries to hide. We’ve tried leaving yummy treats in the crate. We don’t use it for punishment. We medicate her. It hasn’t worked. She’s still terrified.
For a while, we had some luck leaving her in the kitchen, blocking her in with a tall baby gate. But she learned how to climb over the baby gate, so it was back to the crate.
Then last week we thought we’d grown wise, and bought a second baby gate. Stacked on top of one another, they seemed impossible to climb over. The first night, they worked well. I could tell by the doggy foot prints all over the kitchen floor that she had paced all evening, but it had to be better than being locked in a crate, right?
The second night, we left her for about three hours. When we returned, the second we opened the door we could smell the strong odor of natural gas. Millie had turned on the gas to the burner on the stove. We had to open doors and windows, bring in fans from the garage, and hope no accidental sparks turned our home into a fireball.
She turned on the gas because she spends the night frantically pawing at the counters, trying to get only she knows what. She knocked a knob into the on position. So when we left her in the kitchen toinght, we removed all the knobs.
She didn’t turn on the gas, but she still paced all around the kitchen and clawed at every cabinet and wall space available. Dirty dog prints were everywhere, and bits of paint were missing in some areas. Yes, it’s frustrating to have to clean all of that up, but even more frustrating because I don’t know how to help her. She’s obviously miserable when she’s here alone – panicked even – and I can’t help her.
So instead, I’m listening to the rain and wishing for a week of sunshine so she could be outside for a few days. I think the rainy weather has been hardest on her this last month, but we could all use a break.