THE DOG WHO THINKS TOO MUCH

My blogs lately seem to all be about Cooper. I am not sure whether this is because he takes up a lot of my mental space or whether I am just paying more attention to him, since I know our time is limited, even if he doesn't.

It is 3:45 as I write. I have been up for about a half an hour. At about 3 this morning, Cooper came to talk to me.

He says "Good morning." and I reluctantly open my eyeballs. I ask if he needs to go out. He doesn't leap up and run for the door. He says "Good morning. There is something wrong."
I hate it when he does this.
I ask if he is sick. He says "Good morning. Look around."
So I do. It is dark. Of course it is dark it is 3 in the morning.
"No," he says, "listen". And I Listen, and it is silent. Wait. SILENT?
"Yes," he says, "listen to the silence."
And slowly, very slowly, I realise nothing is running. There is no refrigerator noise, no clock noise, no lights on the computer, no lights on the weather station. Hmmm. I sit up and look across the street to where their bathroom light is always on. It isn't.
Awwwwwwwwpooooie. No electricity.
"Right" he says. "The magic stuff is off. All I can hear is you breathing and the rain."

I get up. Now the dogs are up and want out so I let them outside. I fumble around for the $100 totally dependable heavy-duty police-issue flashlight which almost instantly quits working. Luckily there are two: the other heavy enough to cause back strain. I see a couple of lights working on the cable thingie so I try to use the phone but the cable actually is out so the phone is too and I have to use my cell phone to call CWEdison and get the automated response which says, basically:
YOUR POWER IS OUT. SOMEDAY IF YOU ARE VERY VERY GOOD WE WILL RESTORE IT. MAYBE.
The dogs are back in and Cooper will not leave my side. I get the portable police scanner. The batteries are dead. I get out all the batteries in the house and start putting them in the scanner but nothing works. Cooper is watching intently.

"Why don't you use the battery tester?" he asks. I glare. I get out the battery tester which tests every battery I try as dead.
While I am doing this, concentrating in the sharp light of the flashlight, Cooper is bumping me with his nose. I tell him to stop. He keeps it up.
Finally he says:
"Hey! Look around!"

Oh. The electricity is on.
He wanders off to his chair in the living room. I pile all the batteries on the freezer.

Sometimes it is really not fun to have a dog that is smarter than you are.