David Friedli

By the Dashboard Lights

January 15, 2009

One Left Out

Did you ever have that friend that you really wanted all your other friends to be friends with, but it wouldn’t work out?

Like when you found a new girlfriend and you wanted your best friend from high school to like her because she was your new girlfriend, but your friend never warmed up to her and you could never quite understand why?

Or when you are out with a group of friends having a good time and great conversation, and then another person shows up, who happens to be your friend and joins your group and it is like a cold front just moved across Nebraska, with the fun times coming to a halt, conversation freezing and people suddenly checking their watches and declaring, “Oh my gosh, it’s time to go!”

You look at your watch and see it is 7:48 PM on a Friday night and you know there is nothing in the world going on that your friends need to leave to take care of.

Perhaps, like me, you sense you have been that one person.

The one that doesn’t quite fit in.

That is for another column.

This column is about the one member of our family that won’t get along with our best friends.

Addy, the family pooch adopted from the rescue shelter a few years back, is the alpha-female of the house.

Regular visitors and neighbors learn quickly not to ring the doorbell and not to enter through the kitchen door.

Addy takes those actions as the equivalent to a declaration of thermonuclear warfare. Her piercing bark and menacing growl are intimidating.

What we want her to do is to like our friends, especially Nate and Katie and Ace.

Mostly, we want her to like Ace.

Ace is a 14-year-old light-haired German Shepard who is just about the sweetest dog in the world, and when Nate and Katie come to visit, they bring Ace.

Addy takes great offense. She is territorial and terrible.

Nate and Katie’s last visit was a 48-hour growl-fest. Addy has something against other dogs on her turf. She seems to have a special grudge against Ace.

Of course, Nate and Katie just say it’s a dog thing, and is no big deal.

They are gracious. It is a big deal. The barking and growling and threatening and posturing and intimidation is stressful, not only on humans within hearing range, but certainly so on a visitor who is almost 100 in dog-years.

Too soon, Nate and Katie and Ace leave for home. They probably had important things to do.

Hopefully, it wasn’t 7:48 PM.