Day 23

I'm grateful for Molly.  After we finished our back fence, we moved her fence, too, so she can be on the back porch when it is raining/snowing/cold.  We often find her peeking in on us like this:

She comes inside often, but has lots of energy and is happier outside the bulk of the time.

I've been taking her for a few night runs.  Because it gets dark so early, I would not want to go by myself, but Molly makes me less nervous.  She hears everything and is on alert the whole time.  She almost took out a couple of lighted lawn reindeer for me when she thought they were a threat.  It was pretty funny to hear her use a mean bark, so different than I have ever heard her use when she was trying to warn me.

Tonight, she kept barking.  I opened the kitchen window and told her to stop.  She did for half a second.  Then I opened the back door and told her again.  Finally, I opened the laundry room door that leads into the garage, because it sounded like she was in front, right next to the garage.  I was startled to see the garage door wide open, so I told her to stop again, and shut the garage door.  At some point, it dawned on me that it was her different bark, her mean bark.  I looked out the window and saw four people trying to sneak out of our yard.  I ran to the front door, threw it open and yelled at them to "Get out of here!"  They didn't even act concerned, and kept sauntering out along the fenceline.  It made me mad.  There have been several cars broken into, purses stolen, guns stolen in our neighborhood lately, and I wasn't about to let them get away with more!

So I slipped on my shoes and coat and ran after them.  I followed them and called 911 while I was following them.  I gave them a description and told them where they were, and then I looked up and they had disappeared.  One of our neighbors is a state cop and I think they saw him and ducked down somewhere.  So I went back home and called my next door neighbor to let her know, too.  She called me half an hour later and told me that her son had seen them, too, and actually recognized one of the boys, so I called dispatch back with a name and street where he lived.  

Jared and I were laughing, because we live in a nice neighborhood that SHOULD be really safe, but we have had a neighbor's party get out of control and a drunk drive through a fence and around our house, and some teenage kids try to break into our garage/car in the 2 years we have lived here.  We lived on Monroe Street in Twin Falls for 4 years and had drug dealers live down the street and never had anything crazy happen to us.  I think people who live in good neighborhoods sometimes let down their guard, though, so that is probably why things keep happening here.