Blue light reflects across the room from our late night research session. Sporadically perusing around the office from the collar of my sweatshirt, my Dachshund-Terrier mix, Peanut, eyes something out of the ordinary.

A shadow from the uplights outside leads me to believe someone is out there. Peanut has made the decision to escalate matters by beginning what I call his “yelp, whine, squeal” approach to counter potential threats. First beginning with the yelp, he knows he is at peak annoyance and therefore able to attract attention from all creatures capable of processing rapid changes to air pressure. After 30 to 40 seconds of yelping, he begins his whine call; I think of this as him attempting to reset the vocal cords he irritated by constantly yelping. He does this by whining at the top of his lungs, just to be annoying. Tell him to “Cut it out!” Or even better, “Shut up!” And one is met with nothing more than his final state of annoyingness. He achieves the transition to the final state through sporadic finishing of his whining and slowly exhaling his lungs just quick enough to make a sound, where he holds this created frequency for as long as his lungs provide air.

It is then that I make my move to stand. The issue with Peanut being underneath my sweatshirt causes standing to result in him either clinging on for dear life underneath (with claw scratches to show) or him making a leap of faith out from underneath my sweatshirt onto any surface around, regardless of what’s set atop them. 

Slowly but surely, managing to back Peanut out from underneath my sweatshirt, he attempts for the last time that night to ram himself back in. My hands grab him in the knick of time to deter his motive of intensive snuggling. I now stand to creep in front of the door, from where we noticed the change in a light outside, seeing a person in darker colored clothing messing with our lights.

Now petrified for someone setting up to rob our house by removing all traceable signs of light from the front yard, I rush to my parents’ room to call for backup in removing the threat from our private property. Upon reaching their already open door, I fail to find either of them. Thinking they may have left to pick up my sister, I knew I was the last line of defense. I make my way downstairs to sneak through the back door (the shadow originates around the front door) for further inspection. As I walk closer to the moving mass, I realize it not to be of some stranger, but rather of my father adjusting our lights to shine on more of the house as we recently acquired an additional bulb socket, with him wanting to install it that night.

The thought of someone breaking into a house in the middle of a subdivision, in Hartland Wisconsin, just as it was getting dark now seems ridiculous; the commotion caused was by all accounts an utter waste of energy from an apparent lack of intelligence on the part of the dog involved.