My Dogs are Smarter Than Me

Fear, Panic, stress, more fear; all of these I experienced in the space of about two minutes when I returned home from the beach today, and all while the Sugar and Dolan danced and barked and pranced around my feet in total innocent exuberance that I had come back to them at last.

I freaked out when I got to the back door only to find it locked when I knew for a fact that I had left it unlocked; I was sure of this not because my memory is so well known for it's accuracy (hah right!) but because I had left the house by that door and therefore could not have locked it. I'm brilliant, I know.

I immediately jumped to the conclusion that some home invader had, well, invaded in my absence and had decided to lock me out in some sort of twisted, mind playing manouver. Yes, I moved very quickly from rational logic to total home alone paranoia of the highest degree.

Meanwhile the dogs were just inside the door hopping around, barking, howling, panting, doing their excited doggy thing and seemingly completely unperturbed the fact that some stranger had been on their property and committed god knows what heinous acts (heinous acts obviously having occurred if the locked door was any indication....and it certainly was in that moment).

I circled the house and found all the other doors still locked, as I had left them, and my bedroom window open the small amount that I had left it this morning. Brilliant, I would simply pop out the screen, open the window and rush in to save my dogs from their peril.

I managed to pop the screen off easily (which is great because I now I'm going to be totally paranoid about leaving my windows open when the house is empty) unfortunately the window crank fell off in my enthusiasm to remove the screen and now I was left with a window I couldn't open any further.

I took a look at the opening in the window and a look at my cadaverous carcass, I've lost weight with the loss of my mother...oh, forget it I'm not going to get into it now, the point is I'm way to thin for my own good right now - as witnessed by the fact that I managed to squeeze my non-existent ass through the 4 inch gap in the window.

I burst into the bedroom, much to the continued excitement of the dogs, and commenced to work my way through the house, inspecting every room and finding nothing out of place.

What kind of evil, home invader mastermind would play this kind of game? Visions of myself as the lead character in a horror movie, stalked by a psychopath danced through my head.

The dogs jumped all over me as I considered my next moves, staring at the mysteriously locked back door. I thought about the dogs themselves, traitors, I thought they could be trusted to guard the house, to guard me, a single female home alone, the perfect target for the imagined psycho waiting in the bushes outside.

It was then that logic return to me, the dogs locked the door. In all their joy at their beloved mommy returning from the beach, having left them for so long (a whole two hours) alone they had jumped all over the back door as I approached and one of them had inadvertently hit the latch.

Mystery solved. Crisis averted.

And my lesson for the day; my dogs are smarter than me....there's a good chance your's are smarter than you too. Try not to forget it.