Dumb Dog.

I’m sure this will come as no great shock to those that know me, but I don’t like dogs. And to be even more honest I’m afraid of most of them. Yes, I’m a grown ass woman who is afraid of dogs. It isn’t the running away from them screaming and crying kind of scared, but if I don’t know a dog I give it a pretty wide berth and won’t be the first to say “come here doggy so I can pet you!”.  I am not really sure where it comes from other than once, when I was a teenager, I was walking down the street after dark and the neighbors bull mastiff came at me from down the street  in a full run showing me his teeth snarling. Now mind you this was a dog that I was VERY familiar with as I regularly babysat the children of this neighbor. He was close enough to bite me (all the while I was shrieking his name) before he came to a dead stop and started wagging his tail with his big ol’ tongue lopped out the side of his mouth waiting for a pat. I may have wet myself a little. Maybe I was afraid of dogs before this. Either way, I’m not a fan. I don’t like the drool, the barking, cleaning up the poop. Big ones that are hyper and little yippy ones. Not. A. Fan.

So today when a lost dog wandered up to our back door I silently whispered a sigh of relief that we are putting a fence up this summer. No more wandering dogs coming into our yard and scaring the bejesus out of me or leaving their “presents” on our lawn.

I was less than pleased that the dog decided to set up camp in our front yard, especially since I had to escort the children to the van to get Little Moo from the bus stop. Of course the kids didn’t mind. Niecey-poo was ecstatic and Littlest Moo (who was at that time screaming and flailing about wildly) even stopped, clapped and said “doggy”. They were all even more excited to see that the dog was sleeping on our front porch when we returned from the bus stop.  You would have thought Santa made a mid February encore appearance the way those kids lit up. This dog was clearly nice and didn’t mind the kids so I let them pet the dog and we brought it a bowl of fresh water to drink. It went back to sleeping in the yard.

Damn dog.

From time to time I entertain the thought of having a dog, for the boys you know. Because all little boys should have a canine companion! I think about how it would be nice to take walks with a dog and have it sit at my feet in the evenings. It would have to be a Golden Retriever or generic yellow, lumbering, friendly, low key dog. Guess what our visitor was?

Yep. I brought him the kids’ table scraps and it wagged its tail and then rolled over for me to pet its belly. He stuck around for most of the morning and until just recently was sleeping up against our front door. I hope the dog finds his home (although is seems less likely with him sleeping in our yard) but if he doesn’t…

Can we keep him dear? We’ll have a fence….

 

 

 

***This would be a less than pleased Zippy watching the dog in our front yard.