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We have a border collie that is old and nearly blind and is an outside dog. We have a golden retriever who is an inside dog. At 4:00 a.m. on Monday the old blind dog, Mali, began barking at the top of her lungs just beneath our bedroom window.

My usual method of dealing with her middle-of-the-night barking is to get up and put her in the garage so we can sleep in peace. As I went downstairs I heard that she had gone to the front door so instead of going into the garage and calling her, I decided to let her come through the house. Important point for later.

When I let her in Emma, the inside dog, decided to come down and growl at Mali since she was on her turf. So I opened the garage door but since Mali and Emma were having a dominance contest, I had to turn back to the two of them with the garage door standing open behind me. Another point of interest later.

Finally, I got Mali into the garage and my first thought was “Mali didn’t eat her food". My second thought was "Mali has food everywhere!", quickly followed by the realization that a bear had come into the garage and pulled out a 50 lb container of food and dumped it half inside and half outside the garage.

Now while I was on a roll with these thoughts I had another one, "What if the bear was still in the garage?" I turned and did a quick scan. No bear, but our new cat was doing some serious evasive maneuvers in the garage. It was darting from side to side, object to object, and I couldn’t help but wonder if I should be doing a few zigzag maneuvers myself.

So now I am in my sleeping attire (ok my underwear) shoveling dog food into the container wondering if the bear had been in the garage when I had opened the garage door and left it open while sorting dogs. Or if I had gone straight to the garage and called Mali, the bear would have greeted me at the door. With each moment to think, I felt the anxiety grow.

Of course while I am pondering these points, my wife was upstairs pondering the fact that she hasn’t heard from me for some time. Now picture the possibility. My wife comes downstairs while I'm still in the garage, shovel in hand, and more than a little nervous about who or what might be in the back yard. While I'm peering into the darkness outside with each shovel, my wife reaches the garage door behind me and innocently asks, “What are you doing?”

I am old enough to die of a heart attack.

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