MY DOG IS A HERO

Lately, I started letting Charlie, our year and a half 

old Yellow Lab/Border Collie mix 

sleep out of his crate at night.

If my husband goes to bed last he always puts him back in the crate but I would really like to get the crate out of my living room so I am trying to get him used to just sleeping out of the crate all night.

Last night, I went to bed last, so I left Charlie out.

When it was time to get up he came 

and gave me a nudge and a lick to  

wake me up.

My SWEET Charlie.

Better than an alarm clock. Right?

I got up and took him downstairs to see if he needed to pee.

When I opened the front door, 

Charlie went out, but he never left the porch...which he inspected

and came right back in. 

 By now, I was wide awake and ready to start my day and

 I went into the kitchen to make coffee.

That is when I saw that it was only 2:30am!

Charlie!

 Maybe hubby is right. Maybe you aren't ready to sleep outside your crate.

..and ....Now I was awake...at 2:30am.

So I turned off the coffee...

went and curled up on the sofa and Charlie climbed up and 

lay on my feet.

Sometime later, minutes? hours? in my sleep, I heard a huge crash of thunder.

"Big storm". I thought.

Then again...minutes...hours...? 

I heard Damon come downstairs, switch on the light and then turn it off and put Charlie back in his crate.

"OOPs" , I wondered...

"Was that thunder? or did Charlie just knock something over?"

Fully awake now at 5am, I finished making that coffee 

and sat down to check my emails....

when Damon came back downstairs and into the room and said ,

"Why did you sleep down here?"

I told him the story...Charlie waking me up, the thunder...

and he said..

"Well, he may have saved your life."

What?

He took me upstairs into our bedroom and showed me what he meant.

He had not touched a thing.

This was the "Thunder"

Look at the king size bed and look at the hole. 
The repair guy said it looks like it came off on the right, swung over, landed on the bed and then broke in half. I sleep on the side you are looking at....

...this is HEAVY HEAVY 130 year old house....Horsehair plaster ceiling...

this is where I sleep, usually on my back,

this piece is solid HEAVY HORSE HAIR plaster.
It took two people to lift it off the bed...it was
Heavy like cement, the sheet was bigger than me...
and this is EXACTLY where it landed...I flipped that one bottom piece over so you could see the underside.

The white is wallpaper, al the ceilings are wallpapered from long ago.

The CHUNK of ceiling hit the bed, and completely flipped over, 
what you are seeing used to be the wallpapered ceiling surface, 
the part that faced up...is now facing down????
take your time...it took me a minute to wrap my mind around it....

this chunk was behind the headboard....

...it's all coming back to me now...

 laying in bed the other day...or maybe it was last week....and noticing 

"was that crack always there?" 

and now.... I know...

don't think it was. 

I think maybe our recent Virginia Earthquake must have shifted something.

The area ABOVE this spot that fell in is in the attic

completely empty and open with NOTHING sitting on it, 

no water, nothing heavy...nothing.

not a thing.

so yeah...I feel very very lucky.

and a little shaky.

 Charlie is my hero.

He can sleep on any sofa anytime he pleases.

Bones for everyone!!!

I keep thinking...what if?

Then I stop because it is too scary to think.

I just feel blessed.

Go hug a dog.