Tale of the Wimpy Dogs

If you come a knockin' at the door at our house, our dogs will bark.  And bark.  And bark.  Buddy has that little dog yappy bark, and he doesn't tend to stop when you come into our house, unless he knows you well.  Buddy is one of those annoying, barking little dogs when "new" people enter his territory.   (And we love him anyway!)

Chester has a deep, rather bellowing bark.  If I were knocking on someone's door and heard Chester barking, I'd wonder if that was the sound of a big, un-friendly dog!  I'm convinced that Chester barks because Buddy barks when someone is at the door.  That's ok, though.  I like having a dog with that deep, somewhat intimidating bark.  He's such a sweet, mellow dog that the bark is by far the worst part of him, but I still like the bark when someone is at the door.

The point of all of that is that no one would come into this house without our dogs letting us know that they were here.  I like that.  Nothing beats our doggie alarm system for our house!

The other morning, too early to venture out into the cold of the Iowa never ending winter of 2013,  I leashed up the dogs, put on my winter outer wear, and went out on the front porch.  Buddy on one leash.  Chester on one leash.  Me standing at the top of the stairs, on the porch, as the dogs did their early morning business.

Something caught my eye.  I looked to my left.  There, on the porch, looking at me, quite calmly, were two cats.  Not my two cats.  Two cats who were curled up in balls, looking quite comfortable to be lounging on our front porch.  And those cats were not in the least bit worried that one person and two dogs had just come outside.  The looked at me, and ignored the dogs.  Consider that......... two cats, who are not our cats, on our front porch, and they IGNORED our dogs.  Ignored them.  Could have cared less that two dogs had just come out of the house where they were free-loading on the porch.  They looked at me a bit warily, but they ignored the dogs. 

I looked from the cats to my dogs.  I was thinking that once my dogs saw the cats, the barking and straining at leashes would begin.  I was also thinking that my dogs sure weren't "with it" that early in the morning if they didn't even smell the strange cats on the porch or notice them in any way.  I stood there, looking from dogs to cats, waiting for something to happen.

One of the cats began to stretch.  Chester looked around.  Chester saw the cats.  Chester went right back to sniffing the grass in the front yard.  The smug looks on the cats faces increased 100%!!!  Sigh.

Early day dog business finished.  Cats still on the porch. The dogs and I head back inside. (Buddy never did notice the cats.  Chester continued to ignored them right back.)  The cats stayed on the porch.  Good grief.

A couple of lessons learned.

1.   The word is obviously out in the feral cat world.  My dogs are cat friendly wimps.

2.   You cannot enter our house without the dogs making enough racket to wake the neighbors, but if you want to lounge on our front porch, they don't have an issue with it.

That is the story of my wimpy dogs.  You may now return to complaining about the Never Ending Winter of 2013.  : )