Locked In The Deadly Embrace of Cujo

More than one of my friends have used house sitting jobs in the summer as a way to avoid paying rent. It is pretty genius, because they usually pay them while they live for free, go through all of their stuff and eat all of their food. I have a good friend who comes to visit from Honduras every summer and she wanted to see D.C., so we crashed my friend's house sitting gig last summer. The house was really nice and had lots of geography books, so it was pretty fun. Unfortunately, they also had two dogs, which my friend informs me were named Cara and Midnight. I can't believe that people voluntarily let their house smell heinous with dog hair covering all of their clothes. Like any good New Yorker, I wear too much black for that. And I am a little bit afraid of dogs. One night while I was sleeping, either Cara or Midnight snuck into my room and I woke up to a dog panting, just inches from my face. To be honest, I might have preferred to see pretty much anything there, even something heinous like Flava Flav.

Sidenote: While I was living in the Dominican Republic, some neighborhood street dogs took a liking to me (my good aura most likely, j.k.) and followed me to school in a line every single day. One of them had puppies, so it turned into quite a procession. The Dominicans pointed and laughed, as they sometimes accompanied me all the way to the classroom door.

School is over, so I am back on house sitting duty in Virginia with yet another dog. I was awoken from my peaceful slumber last night by the sound of labored breathing in the room. Concerned that it was my friend, I scanned the room with my powerful cell phone light. Somehow the dog was sleeping in the room with us. Ugh. This is where it gets weird. I went back to sleep and have a distinct memory of waking up again, finding myself wrapped in a loving embrace with the dog. The scary part is that I have no idea if I that was a dream or the comatose conquering of my most bloodcurdling fear. I don't have any dog hair on my clothes, so I hope that it was the former.

I thought of the cleverest title for this post, but it is kind of dirty, so I can't use it. You're welcome, Mom.