It has been a week of odd patterns. You know how some days you hear a song you haven’t heard in years suddenly played three or four times in the same day? That’s the kind of week I’ve had.

Monday - One for the record book filled with phone calls and dog obedience class sign-ups. It seems like everyone suddenly wants to sign up for training N-O-W! They’ve had my flyer for weeks… It makes me wonder though why they choose to call this particular day and not last month when they picked up the flyer. The dogs in my current graduating class seem a bit “high” but manage to settle down and do well for their final night.

Tuesday - More of the same. I am starting to think the full moon is to blame. Several pregnant women contact me regarding housebreaking issues occurring with their older dogs.

Wednesday – Clients seem unusually agitated and the call volume is up again. But today I don’t have time to return all of their calls and emails because I am on triage duty. That means that blood and gore get my first response, and there are only so many hours in the day.

Thursday – I spoke with four people who plan on getting pups sometime in the future (but not yet). What is up with that? One of the pups isn’t even expected until the fall due to a miscarriage.

Friday – The moon is full tonight. The Northern Native American tribes called this a ‘Crow’ moon and the Farmer’s Almanac refers to it as a ‘Worm’ moon - it’s supposed to signal the arrival of spring. Could everyone’s dogs just be experiencing a bad case of spring fever? Too early to tell; maybe I’ll have to start keeping a “moon” log? Purely for my own reference, I have begun keeping a log to record calls, emails, the reason(s) for them and their relative levels of anxiety.

For quite a while I have been noticing that the days preceding a full moon have been unusually “busy” for me. Today I am wondering if the way in which we humans act under the moon’s influence doesn’t contribute to our dogs’ behavior as well.

Wonder if I could convince someone to fund a grant so I can further study this phenomena? A couple of million should do the trick. It seems like there’s lots of funding for research about things we already know.