Victory: Tuck In Ritual
Do you have a “tuck in ritual” before bed with your furry family member? We have a nightly routine and “tuck in ritual” with little Victory each night. When we come home from the gym after dinner during the week, we play with Victory and watch a little TV with her — She is a Sons of Anarchy fan! I think Doug wants to get little Victory a cut — but I think Victory is much more sophisticated! Then, we take Victory for her nightly walk around the neighborhood. She always gets a little treat after each walk as positive reinforcement for doing a good job on her walk!
Then, we head up to bed, and then little Victory comes up the stairs behind us and she literally runs and hops into bed squarely between the pillows and our headboard waiting for us to come to bed. (On the weekends when we are able to stay up later, sometimes, Victory heads up the stairs on her own and puts herself to bed!) Once in bed, we then give Victory a bowl of water in the hopes that she will not wake us up for a “midnight drink of water!” However, around 2:00 a.m., recently without fail, Victory runs up and down the middle of the bed waking us up for a drink! Usually Doug gets up and gets her fresh water! We are working on Victory getting out of the bed to get her water on her own!
Additionally, instead of Victory immediately settling down and going to sleep between one of our heads and our headboard, as Victory had been doing since we adopted her, Victory has recently been quite active at night. She keeps us up most nights for an hour or so wanting to play! We think this is a good sign that she is getting more comfortable with us and her new home! However, both of us, including Victory, are pretty tired in the mornings! However, unlike us, Victory has the luxury of sleeping all day! Victory does let us sleep in on the weekends, which is really nice! We do think that Victory enjoys the predictability of our night-time ritual.
We had a somewhat similar night-time ritual with our beloved Biscuit — except he slept on his Orvis bed next to my side of the bed and he usually only woke us up if he had a potty emergency! Sometimes on the weekends, Biscuit would join us in bed so that we could sleep in a little longer!
The ordinary moments are the moments I most savor.
Happy Friday!
biscuit's space | The blog of photographer Katherine Carver 
It is no wonder Victory does not want to get up and drink her water in the bathroom. LOL You have trained her that she does not need to do that. You or Doug will bring it to her. Stop allowing her to drink water in bed period! Do not offer it to her in bed before bedtime or anytime. When she stirs, simply put her on the floor and say nothing to her. If she truly wants a drink she will go and get it. If she only wants attention, she will soon learn that the middle of the night is not the time to ask for it. Many dogs get restless in bed at night because they are warm. In Victory’s case, it might be that, or she has been “trained” to wake you up for water or playtime. It may take a few nights and repeated efforts of setting her on the floor and her jumping back up and not settling down, putting her back on the floor again for her to “get it” but she is very smart and will break this habit. Eventually, the only time she will wake you up at night is when she needs to potty or something else is wrong. Look at it this way…If eveytime you did not want to get up to get a drink and someone would get it for you, heck you would take advantage of it also.
Carol Michigan Sheltie Rescue