My Protector

Wednesday morning I kept hearing a loud banging sound...I had been hitting snooze on my alarm clock, as I have a harder time dragging my carcass out of bed when it's cooler out...

I finally realized it was a whopping 5:30 am and Brent had left the dogs outside who apparently thought they were on the verge of freezing to death since it was only 36 degrees out...

The big babies.

I let them in and collapsed my bleary self on the floor with a dog on each side and scratched their ears and pondered how thankful I was that I didn't have to work since I had worked a thirteen hour day on Tuesday...

Kelsey suddenly let out a little huff of "woof" and looked at the door.  Kelsey learned from early on that she was not permitted to bark in the house.  I wish she would instill this value in Chesney, but Chesney feels the need to bark any time she's not getting her way...

Anyway, I was shocked to hear this hushed "woof."  She let out a few more huffy "woofs," looked at the back door then raised all of her hackles and let out a low growl...

I no longer felt bleary eyed...

I was suddenly feeling quite alert.

And more than a tiny bit freaked out...

I strained to see what had her so worked up, but when she saw me looking at the door, she prowled over and proceeded to let out several low huffing "woofs" with a growl in between, complete with hackles raised...

I considered the vast array of weapons and artillery in our house.  I wondered if I was clear on how to load them after years of not doing so...I wondered whether to call my husband and demand he drive home to see what was in our back yard, obviously on the verge of committing mayhem...Perhaps I should call the cops, but the last time my husband had to do that, the officer took an hour to arrive and admitted he had been eating breakfast at McDonalds.

I finally decided to unleash the beast...

That's Kelsey in case you're wondering.

Kelsey dashed into the back yard and immediately began her "I'm a big dog and nobody better mess with me" bark.  It is quite a bark to behold, let me tell you.

She ran to the east side of our yard, where I could hear our neighbors German Sheppard barking also.  She stood there a minute, barked some more...

Then turned and ran back to me...

Hackles still raised...

She scratched at the door...

I let her in with hackles still raised...

She looked one last time over her shoulder...

And she walked over to her bed and laid down. 

Disaster averted.

It made me think of another time that she scared the dickens out of me.  We were still living in south Texas, except Brent had already moved to Oklahoma.  I was letting the girls finish out their school year.  I had awesome neighbors.  Nearly every one of them approached me about calling them if I ever needed anything, and each of them also assured me they had a gun if needed.  I laughed and said we would be fine, but thanks for the offer... 

You see within the immediate vicinity of my house was a San Antonio police detective next door,a retired detective and current mayor of my town across the street, a couple who raised police dogs and were both retired military North of the mayor, and on the other side of the mayor my good friend Eloi, who was also retired military as well as retired stay at home husband while wife still works....

One night I was in the kitchen (making cookies or baking bread or some other equally domestic thing) and Kelsey went over to our front door and started sniffing all along the base.  Deep sniffs as if she was trying to draw all of the outside air into her lungs.  She froze.  She started a low ominous growl in her throat.  She raised he hackles and began to pace back and forth across the door way.

She let out a few more huffs of "woof" and growled some more...I had NEVER seen her do such a thing.

I nearly had a heart attack.  So, I did what any self respecting mother would do...I called one of my many gun toting neighbors (we were in Texas remember) and asked them to come see what was up.  Eloi willingly came over and cased the area.  He couldn't find anything, and said it was probably a possum or some other critter on the front porch.  I sheepishly thanked him, gave him a fictitious plate of cookies and sent him back home to his wife Doris...

So thus far Kelsey has fearlessly protected me from...

Well, nothing as far as I can tell!

But I'm pretty sure her heart is in the right place!