I had thought that misery was having a dog with diarrhea.

Frisket has a delicate stomach and I've gotten used to this about once a year, frequent walks as she works things out of her system. It could have been the stick she picked up on the promenade, the rag she chewed a bit on the street, the unidentified food substance she picked up near the subway station. All lead to the same thing.

But no, true misery is the same dog, with diarrhea, on one of the coldest nights of the year. Every twenty-thirty minutes, all night, with a very brief 90 minutes of sleep between 5:00 a.m. and 7:00 a.m.

When it is not deathly cold outside, I usually just sit on the stoop with her to avoid the walking-up-the-stairs-and-down-the-stairs routine, especially since one of my knees has been regularly informing me of its age and the after effects of that bicycle stunt in 1978.

But with it this cold, I couldn't stay outside that long, and I don't know how good it was/is for her to walk this frequently in this type of cold (at least it is not wet outside). I tried to hang out on our internal stairs but found, while warm, it just isn't very comfortable.

For bonus points: our standard routine is to starve Frisket for 24 hours (on our vet's advice). This is more challenging when there's a second dog in the house who is perfectly fine (I'm not complaining) and thus needs to be fed. Frisket is doubly unhappy.

I have not really slept since Monday night, so if you're reading this and thinking of contacting me about anything today, wait until tomorrow.

Unless Sailor also gets sick, then you may just want to send out the troops to look for a guy wandering the streets of Brooklyn Heights with two sick goldens.