Those Dangerous Charcoal Bags

SUMMARY: Boost alerts once again, saving us from imminent danger.

Sunday evening, my housemate barbequed steaks for dinner. He finished off a bag of charcoal and left the empty bag sitting on a chair on the patio. The dogs were around for the pouring and lighting of the charcoal, the BBQing of the steaks, the cooking, the dinner, and so on.

About two and a half hours later--yes, as darkness started to fall--remember, everything gets spooky when it starts to get dark--Boost started giving her Alert bark out back. I got up to investigate, and there she stood on one side of the patio, hackles up, staring across the patio, giving her staccato Bark! alerts. I walked in the direction of her gaze and realized I was approaching the empty charcoal bag. Yes, indeed, as I got closer to it, she knocked out the barking and began the Super Cautious Approach (ready to run in an instant if it should attack) and finally made it over to the bag, sniffed at it a few times, startled slightly when I moved it a little, and finally visibly relaxed and went off to the flower garden to see whether she could find Mr. Frog to be frightened of for a while.

She's almost 17 months; I had hoped she'd be over it by this time.

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