I know we promised you another article on puppy raising this week. Instead I’d like to take an opportunity to discuss something that’s very topical for me, which is how people perceive the role of dogs in protecting the home and how we should be keeping our dogs safe from harm in these difficult times we live in.
At around 01h30 on Wednesday morning three young men in hoodies jumped into my back garden, carrying various housebreaking implements. Before I continue I want to stress that they are not the topic of conversation.
Our country is in crisis on many fronts and neither I, nor anyone else, is in a position to judge the circumstances and life decisions that brought them to that particular moment so please, keep that off any discussion threads.
I’m fortunate enough to have perimeter beams on my alarm so I was quickly alerted to their presence by the wailing siren.
Now I’m sure you all know that alarms are a tricky business and sometimes they just get set off by weird things in the deep of night, but this time when I got up to investigate I immediately knew something was different.
My two bed-hogging, foot warmers were up in a flash and shot down the passage ahead of me in full alert mode and yelling very loudly.
I knew that could mean only two things: either there was a cat fight out there, or an actual intruder.
I turned on the security light looked out into the garden and saw at least one intruder moving around the pool area.
The whole family was up by then and what followed while we waited for the armed response to arrive was a few very tense minutes of me yelling out the windows while these chaps ran about looking for a way out of the garden (I won’t repeat what I was yelling). While I did that my brave pups moved through the house with me making it sound like I had a whole pack of fangs-dripping killers at my back.
I actually had to clutch onto little Tango’s collar because she made it clear she was up for climbing right out the window and taking them all on herself!
Thankfully all ended well. They jumped over into other properties – setting off more alarms. SAPS and various armed responders arrived and did fantastic work, managing to catch two of them and no-one got any sleep – except the dogs of course!
Now I don’t believe in any of this Alpha nonsense. I’m no pack leader, my dogs are raised on love and treats, they sleep on my bed (yes that’s my choice).
I see them not as pets, possessions, or part of the home defence system – but as part of the extended family who are equally entitled to be kept safe from baddies jumping over the fence in the wee hours.
Had my dogs been outside it’s likely they would have been kicked, stabbed with a screwdriver, or beaten with a rusty pipe (things I found in the yard later).
When it came down to the crunch though the high-tech alarm system did its job by warning us far more efficiently than a cold, lonely barking dog may have done.
The whole family came through safe and unharmed and my lovable, cuddly, inside dogs stood at my side and made it clear that if anyone was going to come into the house and mess with their family they were going to have something to say about it!