Why we have dogs

Forget all that mumbo jumbo about dogs being "man's best friend."  I'm gonna give you the low down skinny on why the boy and I have dogs...  I may say that it's because Cosmo told me 3.5 years ago that all single girls need dogs, but that's only partially the truth.  The boy "claims" he has a dog because our little Jax man was a rescue who needed a home, but that's probably something he just made up to meet chicks at the dog park.  You wanna know the real reason we have dogs???

It's because we are cheap.

No, really.  Forget that a bag of dog food costs us $40 every 2 weeks.  Forget that the LL Bean dogs beds set me back $200 and an angry call to their customer service.  Forget the fact that we got rid of our carpet in favor of laminate flooring because it was easier to clean up the dog hair.  Forget all that.  We have dogs because we are cheap skates when it comes to home security. 

About a month ago some guy came banging on our door at dinnertime (i.e., wine-time) talking about home security systems and could he give us a quote and all that jazz.  The boy being smart kept him confined to the porch and kindly told him that we weren't interested and joked that our dogs were our security system, blah blah blah.  Truth be told, our dogs are more for looks than show.  Jax is so desperate for attention that I feel confident that if anyone ever did come into our house, I think he'd invite them in for tea and a dog bone.  Sawyer, on the other hand may be able to ward off criminals by drowning (or disgusting) them in a pool of his own drool, but that's about as far as his defensive skills go.

We keep a pretty boring routine around our house.  We come home, go for a run, the dogs eat, the people eat, we relax/blog/clean etc.and around 11:00, the dogs lay on their overpriced dogs beds and pass out until the people get up in the morning.  Like clockwork, that is our lives (sad but true).  A few weeks ago, I rolled over at 2:00am to Sawyer's incessant barking from the living room.  I groggily said to husband, "ughhhh....why is he barking?"  to which he grumbled something inaudible and and buried his head in his pillow.  A few minutes later, he was still barking bloody murder when it dawned on me...this isn't normal.  I was suddenly alert.  "No seriously, why are they barking??" I said again to husband.  He seemed to register the oddness of it at the same time as me, and with both of us confident that we were a little too far from London for our dogs to be alerting Scotland Yard that the Dalmatians were missing, the boy got out of bed to check things out.

I laid in bed and listened to him walk into the living room and talk things over with the pups.  "What's going on Sawyer?" I heard him say.  I listened for their footsteps on the hardwood and heard the boy open the front door.  Then I heard him talking to someone.  Then I stopped breathing.  Who the f**k was on our front porch at 2:00am??  Next thing I know the door is closed and behind him and it's just me and the dogs in the house.

I continued to hold my breath.  Why do we hold our breath when we are straining to hear?  Like the lack of oxygen to my body will help me hear down the hallway and through the front door.  I can't hear anything, but after 7 hours passed (okay maybe it was 90 seconds) I was pretty positive he had been murdered on our front porch.  I got out of bed and decided I had to go outside and see what was going on.

For some reason, at 2:00 in the morning I own exactly zero clothing.  Literally.  For the life of me, I stood in my underwear staring at the outline of my closet and dresser, thinking the word "pants" over and over but I could not remember where any pants were.  Not sure why it mattered at that point, but I did not want to walk into the massacre I was convinced was waiting for me on my front porch in what husband referred to as my "granny panties."  Think Taryn....think.  Pants.  Pants.  What are pants?  My mind does not work at 2:00am.  Eventually I made my way to the dirty clothes basket in our room and found something with 2 leg holes in it.  I stumbled into the living room and stared at the front door, not sure if it was a trap to snag husband first and wait until I wandered outside into the same fate.  Again, I held my breath.  Our dogs had stopped barking and were sitting next to me waiting for the master they liked better to come back inside. 

All of a sudden, husband walked in the house.  "What the hell is going on?"  I said.  "The police are on our front porch.  Apparently one of the neighbors called them and said someone was trying to break into our cars."  Really?????  Nothing was missing, but it did not stop my husband from standing in our driveway in his boxers for 10 minutes talking to policemen on bicycles while several of our neighbors stood on their porches. Why is our life so weird?  And more importantly, why is it that people want to break into my piece of crap car all the time?  It only has 2 hubcaps for the love of God!  It's a 2003 Toyota...not a brand new Lexus!  Aside from a pile of receipts and an old yoga mat, there is nothing in my car.  Oddly enough, even though neither the boy or me remember locking our cars when we got home, they were both locked when we went to check things out.  Hmmmm....

By the time the ridiculousness of the evening settled in, I was already over it.  30 minutes of my precious sleep time on a weekday was enough for me, and I crawled back in bed, but not before making the boy check and re-check all the windows and doors to make sure they were locked.  I was already on my way back to sleepy-town when the boy launched back out of bed, having been clearly stewing over something he forgot to do.  He returned to our room with a baseball bat....because clearly a Louisville Slugger would stop the stray bullets should our petty car thief return and somehow manage to outsmart the locks on our front door, despite not being able to figure out the locks on our cars.

We lay quietly in bed, and just before falling back asleep I said, "I wouldn't be surprised if that damn home security salesman called the police and made up a story just to get a sale."  The boy's response...."I thought that too."

And that's why we have dogs.