free time vs. sleep

There are many days on which the dog will wake me up at 4am to go outside. 

There are times when this makes me want to throw the dog in the trash for interrupting my precious sleep.  I don't do it because I love him and it would hurt my back, he's a big dog.  But it's infuriating.  I will snarlwhisper at him the whole way to the door for being such a bother and he'd better not wake the kids and he's got to learn to just cross his damn legs another couple hours until a more reasonable time when sane people usually wake up.

Then there are other times where I am tremendously grateful.  He's woken me up and given me a legitimate reason to get out of bed that my wife won't be mad about and the time is perfect - right in that sweet spot where I've had just enough sleep to maybe-sorta function today, but now I've got two hours to myself.  TWO HOURS!  It's been, literally, months since I've had that much free time in a scenario that didn't involve the dog waking me up in the middle of the night.  I need my free time, I crave it, I yearn for it, and on occasion, the dog provides me with the opportunity to have it.  I'm probably going to fire up a video game as soon as I'm done posting this, and I'm rather happy about the idea of getting some uninterrupted gametime.

So my poor dog, he just has to go to the bathroom, and he doesn't know which attitude is going to come down the stairs to let him out.  Am I going to be angry, hissing venom at him, or am I going to pat him and be grateful?  Does he even care?  Dude just needs to piss, after all.