The Girl Next Door

There’s a courtship going on under my nose and I was none the wiser.

Pettigrew, like most dogs, likes to poke his nose out the door and sample the weather. Depending on what he learns from that preliminary sniff he either saunters out on to the porch and settles down or, he turns tail and snuggles on the living room sofa.

At least, this is what I thought was happening.

It turns out, there’s a lot more going on than I thought.

When he’s outside, I often hear him barking. Foolish me, I assumed it was at a squirrel that had invaded his turf or at some other intruder real or imagined.

What I didn’t know is that there was a clandestine rendezvous in progress.

This morning, I happened to look out. What did I see? Pettigrew standing, all four legs braced on the sofa cushions, body facing our neighbor’s yard. Following the line of his gaze I saw our neighbor, an otherwise respectable woman, on her back porch, clearly engaged in exchanging sweet nothings with our dog.

His tail wagged ferociously. She answered with what I can only assume were cooed words of endearment to which he responded with enthusiastic barks.

Eventually, she went back inside her house and Pettigrew curled up on the cushions again.

I had observed them before in the back yard, exchanging seemingly innocent greetings, but it appears their relationship has progressed.

Luckily, Pettigrew’s heart is big; there’s room for all of us.