Greensboro's finest at 5:30 am

I make it a policy to spend the time between 6:30 and 6:45 am spooning with my husband during the snooze, pre-waking phase. So why, you ask, am I instead dressed and blogging? It's simple, really:

About an hour ago, our younger dog, Cosmo, began returning the barks of dogs across the neighborhood - we could hear them like a muffled dog choir. Cosmo, being the polite dog he is, was giving his little bark but it's still a lot more than I like to hear during what I consider to be the middle of the night. Still, we were mostly asleep... until the doorbell rang. I'm pretty sure Rob yelled; I'm positive both dogs started barking in their outdoor voices.

A peak out of the window showed a cop car parked outside of our house. In retrospect, I wish we had the presence of mind to answer the door yelling something random and confusing like, "There ain't nothin' unholy about our love!"

As it was, we just answered the door to find a young, round cop clutching his 12-gauge. Seems that an emaciated pit bull was on the loose and our neighbor suggested it might be ours. For the record, we have two well-fed mixed-breeds, both of whom are indoor dogs and neither of whom look remotely like a pit bull. We suspect the neighbor who fingered us is the very one who keeps two dogs in a small-ish outdoor pen 24/7 (we've hatched a half dozen plans to spring them) and who, a year ago or so, asked us if we could keep our dogs inside so his outdoor dogs wouldn't bark at them. Sure thing, buddy - we'll potty train them.

Just then, the pit bull charged the cop who quickly asked, then immediately entered our house. Can't blame him or the dog - if my ribs were sticking out, I'd be thinking about biting a cop too. The cop kept apologizing; apparently he'd had a couple of bad experiences with pit bulls and has even had to shoot a couple to get out of it - he was pretty well determined to not have to hurt this dog. We stuck an enormous bowl of food out of the door which the dog ate in a matter of moments... probably too much for one sitting on a shrunken stomach but we were hoping to distract it until animal control could arrive.

Eventually the cop snuck out the back door and through our gate. From our window, we saw him lure the pit bull into the backseat of his cruiser. It was a pretty slick move, actually, though I wonder if the cop will regret it when the dog either pukes up all the food he ate and/or eats the upholstery.

To me, the really sad part is that people buy pit bulls because they want a mean dog and they train them to be that way; the fact that the dog was starved just made it all the worse. Maybe pit bulls do have a greater inherent tendency toward meanness, but any dog would turn mean under some circumstances, and pit bulls can be sweethearts if raised with love.

On the upside, the early wake-up call gave us ample time to get the turkey out of the brine, rinse it off and reconfigure the fridge to give the bird room to dry until it goes into the oven tomorrow morning.

Over and out.