What Is It With Dogs and Package Delivery?

Long before George Bush the Younger created the Department of Homeland Security it existed in homes around the world where dogs lived.  I was on the phone with my friend Lynn today discussing important matters such as the last episode of The Bachelorette, when suddenly her sweet Wheaton Terrier, Millie went wild and crazy barking as if Freddie Kruger had broken into their house and was hacking Lynn to bits.

As the normally sweet and docile Mille was ferociously barking three rooms away from Lynn I asked if I needed to call 911.  Lynn screamed at Millie in that “Shut up, your mother is on the phone,” voice and sweetly came back to me and said, “No worries honey, it’s just the Fed-Ex man.”

My darling and none-too-vicious dog Shay Shay also staunchly guards our house from any potential offending package deliverers.  Yesterday in all her been-shaved-too-close-skinniness she stood her ground against the UPS man who threateningly held the box containing the menacing Texas Instrument TI-84 calculator Carter needed for math class.  I don’t know if Shay Shay thought he might compute us to death, but to her it was her duty to prevent that man from giving us that very very bad package.

When I was in college I had a sweet mixed terrier mutt named Beau.  Beau weighed about twenty pounds and never met a stranger, except for our Mailman. I lived off campus in a row house that had a mail slot in the front door.  Beau would sit perched on the back of an arm chair in the front window, looking more like a cat than some trained attack dog.  As soon as the postman stepped up on our front porch Beau would jump down and stand barking and growling at him, ripping each piece of mail from his hand as he pushed it through the mail slot.

Neither my dog’s nor Lynn’s acts this way when a different stranger comes to the house.  Shay has never turned into some Cujo-type dog when the Jehovah’s Witness people come and stand patiently at my front door.  Many a teen-ager selling magazines has rung the bell over and over again and Shay is not half as concerned about them as I wish she would be.  At first I wondered about the uniform, but the Gasman has not been met with the I-am-sure-you-are-evil greeting that a person with a package has.

Let this be a tip to all you conspiracy theorist that are sure anthrax is being sent to you.  Get a dog.  It is your own personal homeland security department.  Not only can you prevent dangerous packages from entering but you will be well loved locked safely in your home.