Burglar steals comedy socks

There are days when I curse the hour the thought of getting a dog entered my head. That hour usually follows me discovering the remains of another item of either furniture or fashion he has consumed. When he barks for hours at his own reflection, eats precious teddy bears or digs a hole big enough to bury him in I am tempted to do exactly that. It’s true to say that our Buddy adds another, completely different level of stress to our house. But, perhaps through having our mental wellbeing worn down by his eccentricity, we love him.
We appreciated him all the more this week when we heard the news that nearly every house in our street was broken into except ours. Early one morning last week the Budster woke us all up going bananas at the patio doors, barking like a dog possessed. We thought that, as usual, Buddy’s supersensitive ears had picked up on a cheeky fly buzzing by the back window or that someone a mile away sneezed, unsettling the balance of his universe. The husband treated this disturbance in his usual manner – shouting at the top of his voice from bed for the dog to shut up, that he was going to wake the entire house, thus waking the entire house himself. The dog barked and the husband hollered. The dog must have thought the husband was barking too and barked some more and the din seemingly scared the latchicos who were thinking of breaking into our house away.
And so the burglaries were the talk of the street all week. My kids overheard and freaked out. In their minds the only people allowed to sneak into our house in the middle of the night are those bearing cold hard cash or shiny gifts – the tooth fairy and Santa.
And so the nightmares began (theirs) as did the sleepless nights (mine).
Picture the scene….

Time: 3am GMT
Location: Our house
Current mood: Dire to diabolical

Daniel: “Arrrrrgggghhhh!!!!!!!”
Me: (rushing into his room in a panic, expecting to have to throw some serious Ninja shapes and whack an intruder with hair straighteners) “What! What! What!”
Dan: “Someone stole my sock, MY SOCK IS MISSING!!”
Me: (having lost the will to live) “No one stole your sock Daniel, go to sleep”
Dan: “Well it was here when I went to sleep and now it is missing. It was probably the same people who stole Robert’s TV and Joe’s car. Phone the police.”
Me: “OK, I’ll have them put out an APB and a missing sock report. I’ll tell them a burglar came in and ignored all our valuables but made away with your dark green sock with comedy bats on it. I’ll get CID to do an artist’s impression, we’ll get every single member of the force onto this, no stone will be left unturned. We’ll get your sock back, son, don’t you worry about that.”
Dan: “Really?”
Me: “Of course, it’ll be on Sky News tomorrow when you wake up.”
Dan: “Cool”.

The moral of the story is that Buddy and his quirks are really annoying at times but so long and he and the husband stay crazy Dan’s precious socks, and the rest of our valuables, are safe.