The one where Jehovah's Witnesses regretted stopping by

I don't like unexpected visitors. If a car pulls into our driveway or somebody knocks on our door, I better know who they are and what they want because I'm not into surprises. That extends to phone calls too. There are like 8 people I'll answer an unexpected call from. Otherwise, leave a detailed message and I'll call you back after I'm mentally prepared to talk to you. Or don't leave a message and we can move forward and pretend that never happened. 

Part of it is due to my own anxiety and introvert-ness and a lot of it can be blamed on situations that happened when we used to live in a neighborhood where pushy people would knock on our door wanting to clean our carpets or guys selling meat out of the back of their pickup trucks. The final straw was when a guy with the name Sue tattooed across his neck knocked on our door and his opening line to me was "Would you like to take a look at my meat?" 

"Sue" almost got himself kicked in the meat that day.

Now fast forward to a couple of months ago, I was out watering my flowers when a white van slowed in front of our house. Thinking it was our contractor, I waved. But as it pulled in, I saw it was full of old people all dressed up and I knew this wouldn't end well for somebody. 

The white van was the first strike against them, because you might recall it was a white van that triggered a call to ADT and the transformation of our house into Fort Knox with cameras, motion sensors, security systems, and everything in between. Our 2 German Shepherds are the second line of defense. No need to detail our 3rd line of defense here, but if you know you know.

So while 2 old ladies climbed out of the van with clipboards and pamphlets, I walked inside to wait behind our useless and unstable screen door. (The story on that door is currently ongoing, but coming here real soon.) Ryder, our smaller German Shepherd, met them outside beside their van. Emma, our larger German Shepherd stayed inside beside me. 

One of the ladies was looking cautiously down at Ryder who stood continuously barking up at her and said, "He won't bite will he?" I replied, "Only if I tell him to." She nervously laughed and said, "You're not going to tell him to, are you?" And with a straight face I answered, "Depends on why you showed up to my house uninvited."

Let's get a couple things straight real quick. 

For one, Ryder's a girl but that's neither here nor there. 

For two, she's never bitten anyone that I know of, much less on command, but she's a rescue dog so I don't know her history. Just a word to the wise- your best bet is don't go onto somebody's property and ask if their dog bites. It's a dog. Assume it bites and do everyone a favor and don't show up at peoples houses uninvited. 

But undeterred, as Jehovah's Witnesses are known to be, both women stepped onto our porch and approached the (useless and unstable) screen door, which amped up the barking from all the dogs, making it impossible to hear anything she was saying. I just kept pointing to my ears and saying, "I can't hear you." 

She started to grab a pamphlet to give me as she yelled over the barking, "WE HAVE ENCOURAGING NEWS FOR YOU!" But when she reached into her bag, Emma lunged straight through our (useless and unstable) screen door and the women took off running screaming, jumped back into their van, and left without another word.

Unless their encouraging news is that they're going to get Lowes to finally replace our useless and unstable screen door, I doubt the van full of Jehovah's Witnesses comes back. 

Probably for the best. Our dogs don't like unexpected visitors either. Or pamphlets, apparently. And one of em's willing to dive through a door to shut that sh*t down.