Whole Lotta Scratchin' Goin' On

George woke me at 3:20 this morning. That's our dog, Bush. No reflection on you, nor on your Dad. Nor on Georgie, either. As I think I mentioned much earlier in these diaries, he happened to come along around the same time George Harrison died. That's the Beatle, Bush. Well, the former Beatle. Which is how our George got his name. Anyway, as I was saying, he woke me at 3:20 this morning. He has developed this nasty little habit of yelping in his crate in the middle of the night. He sleeps in his crate. Has done since he was a puppy. He seems to like it there--in fact, he demands to sleep there: around bedtime, he'll jump down from our bed and announce it's time for him to retire for the night. I guess the little snack we give him is an encouragement. He goes off to bed just fine, and we close the door on him.

Just recently, though, he's taken to this yelping in the middle of the night. Imperiously. He's a little dog, but he suffers from this Napoleon complex. Thinks the whole universe revolves around him, and the whole world is there to do his bidding. (Sound familiar, Bush?) Sometimes we let him yelp and he goes back to sleep after a while. Sometimes, as I did this morning, I get up and let him out, so that he doesn't disturb Ellie too much. Then I take him off to the guest room, and we'll both go off back to sleep after he's had a scratch. This morning, though, the scratching went on and on. He just couldn't stop. Scratching and licking and chewing at his fur. It drives me up the wall, Bush. Eventually, this morning, he did go off to sleep, but not before he had made me crazy with his restlessness.

It seems to be allergy season at the moment. Someone told us that the eucalyptus trees put out a kind of oil at a certain time of the year, and that some dogs are allergic to it. That may be true of Georgie. He's an Australian import, like the eucaplytus. We had planned to give him a bath yesterday, with some kind of anallergenic shampoo, but then we got to working in the yard and exhausted ourselves, so George missed his bath. Bad parents, huh? He woke again at five-thirty or so, and scratched his way through my meditation, too. And now he just arrived back in my study, as I write these words, and started up again.

So that's what's going on this Monday morning at our house, Bush. Thought you might be interested. I wonder how it is at yours? You're three hours ahead of us, of course, so I expect you've been hard at work these past couple of hours, in your Oval Office. I hope you're giving some serious thought to dumping your Rove. That would be good work for this week. Oh, and making a plan for Iraq. That would be a good one, too. And reinstating some of those taxes you have so disastrously cut. For starters. Plenty to do, then, Bush. Get to it. And have a good week.