Proud Parent

I'm taking this opportunity, like many others, to brag on how incredibly smart my child is. Unlike many others, however, my child is a 2 year old Yorkie named Hank.

First, a little background information- we adopted Hank when he was a 12 week old furball. We planned on crating him at night, and we knew he would cry for his momma at first, but we did not except just how powerful those cries would be! After a sleepless first night- for all of us- we came up with the idea to put his crate on the landing of our garage stairs so his crying would be muffled. It worked! Eventually, when it started getting colder, we decided to bring his crate inside. He was not happy about that move and he started crying again at night. I had an idea that maybe he liked the pitch dark of the garage and didn't like to have any light like what he was getting in the house so we put a dark blue blanket over his crate. It worked and the rest is history. He sleeps every night in his crate with his blanket over him. Even on the weekends, he will sleep in as late as we do as long as he has his blanket.

So now to the part about how smart he is :) Usually, we let Hank lay in bed with us for about 30 minutes each night before we put him up. Some nights, like weekends, we'll let him stay for as long as he wants. I say as long as he wants because he will come tell you when he is ready for bed. A few examples:

Drew got the idea that if we just left our door open a little bit, that Hank would put himself to bed when he was ready. So we tried it, and we thought it was going to work because when Hank got tired, he came up to our heads and snuggled for a little while, then he jumped down and went to his room. But a few minutes later, there he was with his little head poking up over the side of our bed (he doesn't jump up on it). So I picked him up, and a minute later we went through the whole scenario again. Finally, after the third time I had put him back on the bed and he had jumped down again, I realized the problem. He kept going to his crate every time, but he wanted his door shut and his blanket pulled down like normal. As soon as I did that for him, he went right to sleep.

Another night, Drew and I had been out for most of the evening, and Hank had been in his crate the whole time. So we were going to let him stay up for a while, even if we fell asleep. We laid down about 3am and Hank laid with us. About 4am, I felt a wet little nose sniffing my ear. When I tried to ignore it, he gave a light little lick on my ear. When I still tried to ignore it, he climbed up on my chest and started licking all over my face. I sat up and he jumped down and ran to the door. He was telling me he was ready for bed.

So not only is he probably the cutest dog ever, but he is definately one of the smartest! :)