'We don't HAVE a dog!!!"

Okay, so I will warn you right now that this is a bit mean-spirited.  I doubt anyone is this 'blogosphere' will read this and know that I am talking about them specifically...but you never know!

Okay...so I have these neighbors, right?  They have kids.  Their kids are not the same ages as mine, but they live just a little down the road and we know each other enough to say 'hello' in passing.  That's about it, though. 

Sorry...I have to stifle my giggles to type correctly...

A couple of years ago, we found a stray dog running around our neighborhood.  Somehow, they always manage to find us.  It was a sweet little male miniature pinscher  that we ended up keeping for a good three or four weeks before he was claimed...but that's a whole other story!  He was discovered in the middle of summer in the afternoon.  I put him in the car and drove around to the houses up and down our street to see if anyone knew where he lived.   (Don't judge me.  While I do admit to being quite 'sloth-like' by nature, we all have 2+ acre lots and our houses are very far apart so I had to drive if I wanted to get anywhere)  As I carried him up to this one house, a woman answered the door.  I asked her if this was her dog or if she knew where it belonged.  In a surprisingly defensive sort of way, she snaps back with, "We don't HAVE a dog!!!" 

Okay.  I'm not sure if she thought I was trying to pawn the dog off on her or maybe assuming one could have a pet dog could be taken as an insult.  Maybe in CRAZY WORLD asking her if she had a dog was along the same lines as insulting her mother.  It just wasn't an appropriate reaction to such a simple question.  I thanked her for her time and moved on to the next house. 

Now, fast forward two years. 

This past summer, we found another dog wandering the neighborhood at night.  This was a big yellow lab.  She was gorgeous, and she looked well cared-for but lost so we put her in our car and took her home.  We stopped by a few neighbors' houses to see if they might know her.  She did actually look a lot like a dog that I had seen being walked around one of the daughters of the woman who "didn't have dogs!" two years ago. I stopped by there to see if this was their dog.  Once again, the same woman answers the door.  Once again, she immediately snaps, "We don't HAVE a dog!!!" 

This time, I knew better. 

"Really?  Because I could have sworn that I saw your older daughter walking a dog that looks a lot like this one up and down the street.  I think her name was '****?'

Her younger daughter stood at the door and told me, "Yes, we have ****.  Actually, we have two dogs in the backyard."

But they don't have dogs, right?

RIGHT???

So, you can imagine my surprise when a loose dog turned up at our house yesterday afternoon and it ended up being THEIR DOG.  Before I knew who the dog belonged to, I was half-tempted (the hateful, bratty half anyway!) to go up to their door and ask if it was their dog.  (Of course, at that time I was assuming that it was not, in fact their dog.)  I just wanted her to snap at me about not having dogs while being able to hear their dogs barking from the backyard the whole time.  You know, to back up my whole 'crazy theory.'

Sometimes, irrational people amuse me.