Solomon the Hero Dog

This is off-topic, but I just have to sing the praises of my dog right now. Some of you have met my dog, Solomon. He is very gentle, so much so that my friends' 16 month old can feed Solomon his entire dinner one piece of kibble at a time out of her little hand. She can also try to push his head into the water dish so that he won't be thirsty and he doesn't retaliate in any way. He has not fussed when toddlers have pulled his tail, stuck fingers up his nose, when I step on his feet (which are frequently in the way), or at any other time. But he knows who the bad people are.

I didn't get to witness his heroism, but my roommate, "T," was home when our upstairs neighbor tried to break up with her boyfriend. Apparently, boyfriend was not too pleased about this and yelled enough that our neighbors who run a rat dog day care called the police. The neighbor brought her 3 year old down to stay with T and eventually came down herself to hang out in our apartment because she needed to get away from crazy now ex-boyfriend.

So, dude decides to deal with this by TRYING TO BREAK DOWN HER DOOR. Big hole in her door. Then he must have figured out she was in our apartment, because he tried to kick in our door. Nice big dent in our door now. At this point, the old lady downstairs called the landlord and the police and now there's a restraining order against him.

But the whole time that he was trying to kick down doors, Solomon stood on guard. According to T, all his fur was standing straight up (and he has quite an impressive "mane"), he had his teeth bared, in attack position, growling, looking scarier than she had ever seen. I've had this dog for 8 1/2 years and I've never seen him look anything like this. If the guy had managed to get through the door, T is sure that he would have bitten him. She said he was crouched and looked like he would spring up and go for the throat. After dude left (which T thinks was at least in part due to the growling coming from our side of the door), Solomon spent the next hour guarding the door.

You'd never guess now that he was so ferocious; the landlord is thumping around fixing the door and the dog is trotting around smiling just as happy as could be. But it's a relief to know that there's some instinct in him that lets him know which thumping people are to be attacked and which are fine to just lick and greet with a wagging tail.

I miss all the excitement! I wish that someone had at least gotten a picture. I guess that wasn't their first priority.