You never know what you are going to get when you go out on a story. Take the other day; I was looking for reaction from a man for my report at 10:00pm. I had his address and was prepared to walk up to his front door. This one had potential for danger though. We had good information that the homeowner had quite a few weapons inside his home, rifles, shotguns and the like.
My photographer is CAM, which is not his real name. Cam told me if I put his name in my blog, he would kick my tail. Not one to back down from a challenge I told Cam, “Well like Jim Brown said, I guess that’s a tail kicking I’ll have to take.” Cam said, “Nothing happened that day why are you writing about it” I said, “It’s a blog, we’re not competing with Dickens here,” Cam laughed at that one.
Cam is a nice person. We talk often about women, politics, sports and other interesting subjects under the moon. No seriously, he says he's a former Gulf War veteran. He's a pretty big guy, and I’m not exactly a shrimp. Therefore, I feel like we can both handle just about any situation. Cam though wants to shoot video of me walking up to the door. I’m like,” No, why not walk up there with me? That way if he opens up his purported arsenal we’ll both be shot? If we’re going down, I’m not going out alone.” I was joking but Cam thought I was serious. The next thing I know we’re both starting our trek to the front door. The man’s driveway though is shared with the neighbor’s driveway. We take a few steps toward that driveway and we spot an aggravated looking boxer headed our way. I mean he has this look as if we are his next dinner. He stops within ten yards of us. We stop too and stare at him. He stares at me, I look over at Cam, Cam looks back at the dog, and the dog goes back and forth between the two of us. It feels like the movie, The Good, the Bad and the Ugly. You know the graveyard scene with Clint Eastwood, Eli Wallach and Lee Van Cleef all staring each other down. The three principal characters meet in a graveyard where a fortune in gold is supposedly buried there. They all star each other down.
That’s how it felt, nobody was moving. The dog looked like he wanted us both rare. About thirty seconds passed and I said to Cam,” You think we should talk to the owner,” Cam says, “Yah.” The dog’s owner was about ten yards behind the hungry looking K9. He was sawing on some wooden car trailer. I said, “Sir, is your dog friendly,”
He said, “ Oh him, he wouldn’t hurt a flea.” Suddenly I hear that song by George Strait blaring in my ears,” Famous last words of a fool,”
Yah, that’s all I need to have, *** Clark introducing this mistake on TV’s Bloopers and Practical Jokes. Clark says, “Now here’s a reporter in Salt Lake City who thought a dog was going to be friendly when he petted him. Watch the animal gobble up a hand and a microphone.”
I have had a few friends in this business who have had these kinds of confrontations with angry dogs. But, this time the owner was right. The dog never acted up, and we found out the man with the suspected boatload of firearms no longer lives at the house next door. That is why I love this job, every day is different. You never know what you are going to get.
