A couple of incidents with dogs that I encountered when I was a television engineer:
The customer had a pair of large Doberman dogs reputed to be so fearsome that the house bell was at the gate rather than on the door. A ring of the bell always produced distant furious barking. With the dogs safely locked up the owner would come and open the gate. I'd been there a few times, so was familiar with the procedure. On this occasion I rang the bell but heard no response at all. Not even a whimper. Hmm...nobody in, they must have taken the dogs for a walk ..now what to do?
It was important to leave a 'No Reply' card to let the customer know that I had kept the appointment. If I left it on the gate someone might remove it. Also, it would have advertised the fact that no one was at home. The card had to go in the letter box. There wasn't one on the gate so I cautiously opened it and started the journey to the front door, which seemed miles away.
I was about at the halfway mark when the dogs came bounding towards me. "This is it" I thought, "I'm gonna get torn limb from limb". They surrounded me and I waited for the first bite. What I got instead was a big lick on the hand followed by lots more licks and a lot of fuss. To my great surprise and relief the dogs were as friendly as any little lap dog.
The owner eventually came out. I apologised for letting myself in and explained why I had done so. "That's alright" she replied "But please don't tell anyone the dogs are friendly, I tell everyone they're ferocious. If word gets out about this, the dogs won't be a deterrent anymore". I assured her that the secret was safe with me. On future visits to the house I still went through the pretence of the 'vicious dogs' procedure just in case anyone was watching. This was more years ago than any dog lives, so I reckon I haven't broken faith by telling the story now.
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When I was with the television rental company, call times were arranged by the receptionists and they fell into three categories (the call times ...not the receptionists). These were: AM, OPEN TIME and PM. On this particular day things had gone well and I'd finished all my AM and OPEN TIME calls by 12.15 p.m. This left only one PM call to do for the rest of the day. Strictly speaking, PM calls were started after lunch at around 2.00 p.m but there I was with just this one call left. It was worth taking a chance on the customer being at home since it had gone 12.00.
I knocked at the door and shortly after, heard a scraping noise on the gravel pathway. The German Shepherd dog that rounded the corner pinned me into the doorway and we ended up facing each other in a kind of 'stand off' situation. The rules soon became clear. I'd be OK so long as I didn't move. Every time I tried to leave, the dog came at me again. The immediate future looked bleak. I could be stuck in this predicament for the next couple of hours or so. I reckoned my hair would probably have turned white by the time the customer came home.
As luck would have it, he was actually in and had heard the noise. What seemed like a very long time had probably only been a minute or so but that was enough. The dog's owner apologised for the scare but quite rightly pointed out that had I called a little later as expected, the dog would have been shut away.
I made a show of treating the matter casually and set about the repair. However, the cup of tea he offered me gave the game away. My shaking hand rattled the cup on the saucer like a tambourine. What a good job the customer was at home! I repaired the TV and the rest of the day was mine. I needed a few hours off after that.
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