Wagging the Dog
It was a Sunday, if I recall correctly. All the offices were closed, so the building should have been empty. It wasn’t.
I was walking through the hall, rattling doorknobs. It’s one of the “trained monkey” duties a Security Officer does… one of the mindless things a well-trained monkey might be able to do, but humans have to do it because of what might be on the other side of a door that should be locked, but isn’t. Like today.
I twisted the knob and pulled, and the door came open easily. “More paperwork for me to do,” I thought, and walked in to check the suite. As the door closed behind me, around the corner ahead of me came a large, black dog. And he was most definitely not happy that I was in his house. He bared his teeth, growled deep and loud, and began running at me, eyes on my throat. He was less than a second from me. I mean it: less than one second.
I still don’t know what came over me. I adopted a happy expression, squatted down, slapped my thigh, and said in a happy tone, “Hi, fella! Come here, boy!”
It was as if the dog briefly defied gravity. He almost paused in mid-air as he ran. He stumbled ever so slightly as his feet regained the floor, and by the time he made it to me, he was barking happily, wagging his tail, dancing in circles around me, and licking my hand. Remember: less than one second.
The dog’s owner, a tall and attractive woman whom I knew worked there, came around the corner out of one of the offices. Apparently she was catching up on some work. She was looking at the two of us, the dog and me, like we were playing checkers and he was winning.
“Is this your dog?” I asked.
“Uh… yeah…” she answered. When he heard her voice, he began running rapidly back and forth between her and me, as if to say to her, “Look! Look who’s here! He finally came! Do you see?!”
“One hell of a watchdog,” I said, patting him as he ran by.
“Uh… usually…” she said. She was clearly nonplussed. Then she called the dog and went back to work.