The truth is that Katie did rather well at camping last night. For awhile. I gathered up my stuff around 10:00; flashlight, cell phone, house keys, bottle of water, leash with sheltie attached..the usual stuff. It was difficult to juggle it all, particularly with the dog dancing around my feet in the dark. I picked her up and tucked her under one arm, balanced on my hip like a kid and off we went. Of course for some reason I put the tent up near the back of our yard, so half way there I put her down on the ground and we sprinted, with her dragging me behind on the leash, the rest of the way out to the tent. When we got there she stood on her hind legs and began pawing at the door, while I tried in the dark to get the thing unzipped. Could have used the flashlight then, but she freaks out at moving light, so I chose to work in the dark. She slipped through the small opening I achieved and by the time I got my rather larger self into the tent she was already perched on her “princess pillow” looking out the tiny window at the back of the tent. Contented.

Great, I thought. I’ll just slide under the sheets and we’ll both go to sleep. And mostly we did sleep, off and on, in between her waking up abruptly to check for dangerous camp-attacking marauders lurking somewhere out there in the darkness. She moved around a lot; from her princess pillow, to next to me on my mattress, then onto my pillow which I eventually donated to her cause just to get her to settle down. After that she moved back and forth between “her” two pillows and I slept in between her movements until 1:15 a.m. when something, some apparently very dangerous thing, caused her to begin to howl. Loudly. My husband who was home from work and watching TV in the house turned on the giant back yard floodlights. She howled louder. Non of my shushing (which I perfected in library school) could calm her down, so at 1:45 I gave up and took her back into the house.

I finished my night sleeping in the tent which seemed much too big and too lonely without her there. She, of course, slept on my side of the king size bed snug and warm in the master bedroom, certain that she had won the battle. Little does she know that we’re camping out again tonight!