The CPA and I had a late night on Sunday. Since it was the eve of a holiday and we both had Monday off from work, we decided to stay up late since we were going to sleep in to the ripe old hour of 6:30. Things proceeded as planned. We turned off the lights around midnight and were fast asleep at 12:15.
45 minutes later, I sat straight up in bed, my heart pounding in my chest. Oscar, who had been sleeping in his crate near the bedroom door, was barking furiously. The hair on the back of my arms began to stand on end. The CPA slowly stirred. He wasn’t quite as alarmed as I was. ”Maybe he just had a bad dream?” he suggested. I wasn’t buying it.
Oscar continued to bark with no end in sight. If it had been any other dog, I wouldn’t have worried. But our sweet Oscar just doesn’t bark. He may give a low yelp when someone comes to the front door, just to make sure we know. And he sometimes barks when we’re rolling around and wrestling with him on the floor, but it’s all in fun. Other than that, he’s a remarkably quiet dog. Which is why I was so unsettled by his late-night outburst.
When it was clear that our suddenly vocal pup wasn’t going to stop, we got out of bed and threw on our clothes. The CPA opened Oscar’s crate and he charged into the living room and headed straight for the front door, barking the entire way. At this point, I was convinced that we would find someone standing in our front room to greet us.
We crept around the corner, turning on the lights as we went. I noticed the porch light had been triggered (it is on a motion sensor) which made me even more nervous. Something was out there. I hadn’t heard a car, which will sometimes cause the light to go on, and I didn’t hear an animal. But something had definitely caused our sweet dog to morph into Cujo. A peek out the window didn’t reveal anything and after a minute of hopping around, Oscar finally settled down.
Since there wasn’t much else to do short of walking around the front yard (which wasn’t about to happen) we returned to bed. Oscar was put back in his crate after a grateful pat on the head and a little treat as thanks for all of his hard work.
It took me a while to fall back to sleep. My over-active imagination was going at warp speed. For the first time, I found myself wishing we had a gun in the house. It occurred to me that we wouldn’t have known what to do if someone actually was standing in our living room. Because as loud as Oscar’s bark is, no one could possibly be scared of him once they actually get a look at his furry face,
and stubby tail (sorry Osc, but it’s true).
In other words, we would be in trouble.
But I did learn something from this experience. I learned that Oscar doesn’t mess around. When he thinks there is something going on that we should know about, he’s going to tell us. He may not be the biggest dog in the world and he probably wouldn’t hurt a flea, but you know what? He has a pretty big bark and hopefully that’s enough to scare off any bad guys. And who knows, maybe his bark isn’t bigger than his bite after all.
Hopefully we’ll never have to find out.
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