If you don’t know where you are going, you might wind up someplace else.  Yogi Berra

I am pretty lousy at introductions in my neighborhood.  It’s not that I am anti-social,  but my life has been going a hundred miles an hour, eighteen hours a day, for weeks and months on end. Thirteen years to be exact. When new neighbors move into the neighborhood,  I have to make a determined effort to meet them.   In more than a decade here,  I have been meaning to have our neighbors over for a barbecue which still has not taken place.  This is NOT to say that we are not known to each other.  We work on our yards,  discuss our kids’ futures, lend and borrow tools, ladders, and some elbow grease with each other fairly often over the years.   It just takes determination to get to meet the neighbors.  Once upon a time, it was easier as I had a couple dogs that would periodically get out of the yard and head off for a visit.  Or our cat, Indy, years ago would make the rounds regularly.   On this particular day,  Dexter and Comet were sitting with me in front as I was watering, but then barked and bounded off across the street to greet our newest neighbors.  So much for them never leaving the property without me.

I am fortunate, living in El Cajon  with routinely warm days and  on a fairly quiet neighborhood street, that both Comet and Dexter do not prefer to be outside.  However,  they have a fondness for my neighbor John, and will bound across the street when he is working in his yard.  Most of the time I am present.  On a couple occasions it was due to one or the other of our younger sons leaving the gate open while we were at work.   As for John and I,  during an occasional weekend evening having a few beers and swapping war stories,  Sheri and the dogs have come out looking for me.  They associate him as part of the family.

But as I learned this past weekend,   both dogs are a better neighborhood welcoming committee than I have been.  When Jason, Alex and my wife and I made introductions yesterday,  I learned that Dexter and Comet were already known to them.  They had seen them being retrieved by John and walked back over across the street to my house.

Where Dexter has this throaty bark that might intimidate strangers, neighbors know it to be his “I know you” welcoming bark.  He loves to get his head scratched.   On the other had, Comet opts for a quick pat and perhaps a snack.  My neighbors know this about them.  The more I am getting home earlier in recent months, the more I am getting to know that my dogs are the neighborhood welcoming committee.  Maybe that is the real reason when I get home after twelve or thirteen hours away on weekdays, the dogs are exhausted and prostrate on the floor.

Guest Bloggers Wanted!

In the tried and true SHAMELESS BEGGING fashion as mentored by EVERYONE HAS THE BEST TITLES ,   I am asking for submissions to be a guest on my blog!

• dog stories
• funny stories
• unbelievable images
• funny videos
• observations as a dog-person

Add a few details about you,  how you got started and what your blog is about.

Disclaimer: I will post it exactly as written

I only ask:

1.  no politics, even if your local or federal representative is a mangy cur – we don’t disparage our canine friends that way!
2.  as I am a “recovering Sailor”, please,  no cussing.
3.  nothing your mama would scold you for saying.

Send me a link to your post at notdonner9@gmail.com

I will publish future Guest Posts on Thursdays.