Picture this

It's one am and the house, all except the writer, is slumbering. The writer has been trying to write, but realises she has left it too late and the eyes are refusing to stay focused on the screen. Time to retire. She turns the lights off and, in darkness, feels her way up the stairs, then hits the switch to the landing light upstairs. Creeping around so as not to wake anyone, she makes her ablutions, and is about to turn off the final light when all hell breaks loose downstairs.

In the bathroom, the dogs, who presumably have been sleeping, break out into a vicious, snarly fight. This isn't a little tiff between friends, but a full-on fight that keeps going and going and going. If the whole house hasn't been woken up by the fight, they are by the writer yelling (and thinking once again how the neighbours must love this harridan who's always shouting). The writer's yelling doesn't stop the fight, so the writer has to blunder downstairs in the dark and switch the laundry lights on. The second the lights go on, all is quiet, which is frustrating because now the writer can't even tell what's been going on. The big dog, sheepishly, goes back to bed, whereas the little dog sees this as an excuse to escape.

So what did happen? Did one wake in the middle of a nightmare and frighten the other dog? Did the little dog pee on the bed yet again? I guess I'll never know, but as a writer I'll have brain space to invent stories -- just not at one am.