Still Working After All These Years...

Dogs are the best!

Yep. My ridgeback runs and barks in her sleep!
I’ve actually had to wake her up a few times after she wakes me up! And she always looks at me like, “why the hell did you wake me up when I almost had that rabbit?”

My wife woke me up one night with a call to arms. She heard someone trying to get inside or maybe already in the kitchen. I grabbed a .45 and peered around the corner, crept across the living room, cleared the kitchen, and looked outside to see an errant kiddy pool flapping against the window. It sure raised my hackles and kept me from falling back asleep.

I don't know where that kiddy pool came from and I sure don't know where it went the following day either.

I could always tell when it was our Golden having a doggy dream because of the whiney noise he maid. Lost him to cancer two years ago. I'd give anything to be woken up by him again.

Nice to see everyone here is "ready and able" to defend ones family. My wife tried to wake me one night when something went bump... I'd worked 18 hours the day / night before... She gave up and grabbed her 9mm to check it out... Luckily it was only one of her wreaths banging on the door... It was a really windy night...

Im glad to hear. It wasn't an intruder.

I worked 2nd shift for many years.
I came home early one night as I was feeling sick. I never turned on any lights just walked through the kitchen, dining room and as I got to the living room I heard the sound of a slide being racked behind the upstairs door. I yelled it's me all's well. It took us both a while to go to sleep that night.

Tritium has a half life of 12.3 years. So if you bought it in 1996 and the sights were new at the time, they should be just less than 1/4 of the brightness they were originally.

Which is why I don't pay much attention when people say they only last for 10 years or so.

Had a Yugo SKS a couple years ago that somehow made it in country with the original radium inserts from the '50s intact and they were still bright as all heck......

WrongHanded said:

Tritium has a half life of 12.3 years. So if you bought it in 1996 and the sights were new at the time, they should be just less than 1/4 of the brightness they were originally.

Which is why I don't pay much attention when people say they only last for 10 years or so.

Click to expand...

The factory tritium sights on my 2000-era Gen 3 Glock 19 are now dull, as are the factory ones on my Beretta 96. Some brands seem to outlast others I guess.

Stay safe.

Riomouse911 said:

The factory tritium sights on my 2000-era Gen 3 Glock 19 are now dull, as are the factory ones on my Beretta 96. Some brands seem to outlast others I guess.

Stay safe.

Click to expand...

Probably depends on how bright they were to begin with, and how big the vials are.

I have a used P229 that I bought in 2011 that has SIG night sights on it and I can still see them just fine, even in low light.

NIGHTLORD40K said:

Had a Yugo SKS a couple years ago that somehow made it in country with the original radium inserts from the '50s intact and they were still bright as all heck......

Click to expand...

Uh oh! I certainly wouldn't stand at "order arms" for very long with THAT rifle!

DR505 said:

Uh oh! I certainly wouldn't stand at "order arms" for very long with THAT rifle!

Click to expand...

As long as you don’t suddenly develop an odd culinary compulsion to add the sights as an extra on top of your salad, you should be ok. The danger of the stuff is that it is reasonably radioactive, and has a ridiculously long half life. If it ever stops glowing it’s not because the radium itself has lost much potency, but because the other stuff in the paint mix has. You would, however, want to make sure that none of it gets wet (tends to become very brittle after that), chips or flakes out.

Speedo66 said:

Last night at 4AM my wife wakes me up, "someone is banging on the door trying to break into the house".

Well, something like that will give you a quick adrenaline rush! So now I'm wide awake and grab the Glock 26 with a G17 mag in it.

Click to expand...

Were you excited?

The tritium factory sights on my Para C7.45 LDA lasted about 10 years. Maybe a few more. They are nothing but brown dots now.

Cokeman said:

Dogs are the best!

Click to expand...

Sure as a best friend or companion, but as an alarm, far to high a false positive rate.

Half life of the tritium in the night sights is 12 years so if they are freshly manufactured when you get them they lose half their brightness every 12 years. Trijicon replaced my RM08 dual illumination sight for "free" (I only paid for shipping sending it to them for evaluation"). I got it used circa 2006, I only used it outdoors with its fiber optic illumination, I got the RMA when the fiber optic part became dim in bright light. The tritium in the replacement is way brighter than I ever remember with the original. The ones I purchased circa 2012 for my carry guns are still doing fine with the lights out in our house.

My dog Wilbur had a bark that shivered your timbers. One late night in Oregon he let out this bark followed by a howl that sat me straight up in bed. I had my Smith and a dark flashlight in my hands a second later and was scootin’ down the hall.
As I got to the living room, front door to the right, back patio door to the left all was well. In the dim light of the living room I saw Wilbur raise his big ol’ head from his bed and I swear he smiled at me.
Wilbur was dreaming.
I miss that dog. He had epilepsy. He got really bad and we had to put him to rest. We still have his playmate, Maddie. She’s a Ridgeback mix. She doesn’t miss much. She hasn’t awakened me like that though.

I've posted about this before, but..

I went to bed one night about 1983 and as usual, my two dogs slept with me. Joe was the larger of the two, a 95 pound yellow Lab. The other was my Beagle/Lab mix, Blackie, about 55 pounds. I had long blackout drapes in my bedroom, and they went almost to the floor, it was very dark in that room at night. I don't remember the time anymore, but it was like 3 or 4 am, and I woke up to the drapes going over my face. I don't know why, but I was totally convinced I was going to be murdered. I came up swinging, and hit something alive that went "Uhh-Uhh-Uhh!" as I hit them three times. The drapes were still over my face and I'm pulling them off me and suddenly the drapery rod comes off the wall, and crashes into me. I'm swearing at the top of my lungs and I see I've been punching poor Blackie, who had caught the drapes somehow in her link that her dog tags were on, and she was looking for help, she panicked about almost everything, and thought I was that help, but instead, I beat her up. Joe was on the floor, he sometimes got off the bed if he got too hot, and he was staring at me, probably wondering why I was attacking poor Blackie. I took them out to the kitchen, gave them both some leftover chicken, with her getting the biggest share, and then went back and put the drapes back up. I had to redrill the holes in the wall, and patch the old ones. So I was yelling, then drilling, and in the room next door, my mother slept through it all. My mom felt a lump on Blackie's head later on, and I told her what had happened. She was shocked she slept through all that. Blackie was fine in a couple of days, two of the punches were right on top of her head, and only one was to her shoulder.
Blackie on the left, Joe on the right, not too long before Joe went. Gus wasn't around yet when the above incident happened. Blackie would go a year after Joe did. Gus was a solo for about 12 more years:

My two labs, since passed on, were not the greatest watchdogs. Case in point...heard something in the kitchen at 3am and the dogs were snoozing away at the foot of the bed. Thought it might be my 3 yr old awake with a nightmare, so went to see. Turns out a 350 lb. black bear was climbing in through the window! I smacked it in the head with a pan and it turned tail and ran. NM Game and Fish trapped it on my property two days later...big fella.

I had a chat with my pups and told them I was dissappointed.

Joe proved he was protective in a big way. I was supposed to go to the drive in theater with my GF, but she got sick and the movie I wanted to see was on it's last night, so I went myself with Joe and Blackie. I had an awful Dodge Macho Power Wagon, yellow and black. There were six screens, with the snack bar being the center "hub". I went into the snack bar for about a minute, and left the dogs in the car. It was only like 60 degrees, so they were fine. I came back out and got back into my truck when some drunk guy grabs me by the hair (I had it then, really) and was trying to pull me out of the truck. Joe, who had shown zero protective instincts up to this point, he was about 3, went ballistic and grabbed the drunk's hand and really cranked on it. The guy yelled, but didn't let go, so Joe bit his hand a couple of more times and shook it really hard on the last one. Suddenly, another guy runs up and grabs the drunk and said to him, "We're parked over there!", and sitting about 100 feet away is an identical truck to mine. As the sober guy is dragging his brother away, I said, "What about the bites he got?". He said, not exactly like this, "Too bad for him, maybe he will learn not to get drunk all the time!". I guarantee that he needed stitches in his right hand, it was bitten pretty badly and was bleeding a lot. From that night on, Joe did show some protective traits, especially where my mom was concerned. Blackie had some too, but Gus was a total wuss, but a wuss that could and did a few times, turn into a real piece of work, if you pushed him too far. Several dogs attacked him and the attack got to the point he would finally fight. It got really bad after that. He could fight very well, and his bite power was just crazy high. A couple of the dogs that attacked him paid a big price for their mistake. One German Shepherd would never look even remotely the same after attacking Gus when we were on a walk.

I have one more story about dogs, late night awakenings and guns.

Years ago I had a German Shepherd mix named Gus. Gus was black as midnight including the inside of his mouth except for his tongue.
My wife and daughter were away on a Girl Scout camping trip and for dinner I made Gus, Daisy and me some beef ribs on the grill. Gus loved grilling as I did the work and he got the rewards. He and my Brittany Spaniel, Daisy just loved it and I swear they double teamed me while begging for grilled treats.
Anyway, Daisy was the alarm system and Gus was the enforcer.
So, on this particular night Gus and Daisy got their beef ribs and were very happy.
Late that night I was sound asleep and awakened by the most gawd awful noise I had ever heard. It sounded like a Wookie from Star Wars in serious pain or extremely angry…and it was LOUD!
I sat up in bed thinking “What the **** was that?” and immediately felt the bed shake. Daisy, who was not allowed on the bed had jumped into bed with me and was leaning on me shaking like a leaf. She was scared.
“Raaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhh”
The noise happed again only louder. Daisy pushed hard against me trembling.
I grabbed my flashlight and 1911 that was cocked and locked and had them ready to go and I went to the door.
“Rrrrrrrrraaaaaaaahhhhhhhhherrrrrrr”
I was scared too…I readied myself, realizing that I had my gun in my right hand and the way the door led into the hall there was no easy way to bring the gun into play without exposing myself more but I didn’t want to switch hands as I never shot left handed (that has since been remedied)
I decided to leave things as they were, left hand light, right hand gun, step into the hall, hit the light and have my pistol at the ready. Adrenaline was a flowin’!
Now all this has happened in just a few seconds…
I made my move.
The light illuminated my dog Gus at the end of the hall with his head down. I raised my .45 upwards no longer aiming it. Gus had head down, back arched and he takes a huge breath and “Raaaaaaah-errrrrrrrr” then he coughs and horks up a chunk of beef rib bone into the floor. A piece of bone was stuck in his throat and he was trying to clear it. That was the cause of that Wookie noise.
Man was I relieved. He looked sick and scared. I stepped forward to console him and stepped in the rib bone he was gnawing on in the hall. That hurt!
I looked back down the hall and Daisy also appeared to look relieved.
Poor Gus had decided to gnaw on a rib bone and got a piece lodged in his throat. I did not know beef ribs splinter, but found out later that they do after cooking. I never gave them or any other dog rib bones after that. As a matter of fact I don’t give dogs any bones.

I learned valuable lessons that night.
1. Noises might not be what you think. Be cautious.
2. Become proficient with your non-dominant hand.
3. Slip on some shoes before investigating bumps in the night.