Routine

I’ve commented many times before about the fact that Hound is distinctly autistic, and has what amounts to a very set routine to get her through the day. This has eased up slightly since we started her on the homeopathic pills (known colloquially round Chez Lyle as ‘Happy Pills’- it’s a pretty descriptive name, really) but she is still highly driven by her routines and patterns. A lot of the time it’s a pain in the arse, but at the same time it also gives us a good indicator when something’s wrong, because the pattern changes to her “not feeling well” one.

Anyway, she’s happier when everything is routine, and she knows what’s going on, and (I think most importantly) what’s likely to happen next. At the moment mornings, in particular, are a case in point for this. She still doesn’t actually like me leaving the house – despite plenty of knowledge that I will be coming back later – but so long as the morning follows her timetable pretty well, she’s OK with it.

The knock-on effect of this, though, is that it means I’ve also developed a kind of routine for the morning. In fairness, it’s probably no bad thing to be working on auto-pilot when it’s 5.30 in the morning. But I do find it interesting how easily I slip into a routine of my own – I’ve written before about the fact that despite the fact I like to think I’m pretty random, I do have a lot of bits of my life that fall into their own patterns, which I still find weird, but there we go.

As it is, though, it just makes life easier in the mornings to have that pattern – it means Hound still gets stressy when (for example) I put my bag by the front door, as it means I’m going to be leaving soon, but so long as I keep things fairly standard, she’s then fine when it comes time for me to lock up the back door, and go out the front.

It has to be said, sometimes I don’t know who’s more insane – us or Hound.