Wednesday, July 29, 2026

Things That Have Scared My Dog

Here's a partial list of things that have scared Hannah on our walks in the last month or so. She has either jumped back into my legs or stopped and stared with her tail tucked.

1. A half-full cup of red liquid in a clear plastic McDonald's cup that was tucked in some bushes. (Maybe the smell was bad?)

2. A small landscaping rock that was on the sidewalk. (I mean, it was an unexpected "obstacle" on the sidewalk.)

3. This car. (In her defense, this is the same yard where she once freaked out about a black trash bag on the curb. I touched the bag with my foot to show her it wasn't scary and tried to get her to touch it with her paw. She was NOT having it. A guy comes around the corner and tells me there is a deer carcass in that bag. So. This car might be a legitimate crime scene.)


4. A hummingbird. (It did just sort of come out of nowhere and buzz her. But it's tiny?)

5. This flower. (I cannot defend this one.)

6. Our trail cam. We have a bit of a raccoon problem in our yard. They're using the side of our garage and part of our backyard as a toilet and it's sort of gross. We put up a trail cam to see if they were living in our garage or shed and my husband kept moving the camera. One day he just put in in the driveway facing our shed and Hannah freaked out. HOW DARE IT BE IN HER DRIVEWAY? 

Anyway, we've learned that there are a lot of cats in our yard at night, the raccoons use it as a highway to wherever they are going at night, and that our dog cannot handle change in her yard.

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Has anything new taken you by surprise recently? Do you handle it better than Hannah?

7 comments:

  1. Awww, Hannah. The world is a scary place!

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    1. Is a rock on a sidewalk scary, Nicole? Really? Maybe you should have been Hannah's human.

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  2. What a strange beast she is.

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    1. Yeah. I can't defend her. She's a little weirdo.

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  3. Hannah is unique and quirky! She has her reasons for being scared of these things- we're just don't understand it with our limited senses. She probably is smelling all sorts of things we can't. The flower has me baffled though.

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  4. A DEER CARCASS????? that's what I really want to know about!
    Hannah is a creature of habit, I guess. I feel you, Hannah. So am I.
    I don't handle surprises well. My work colleagues say I have a terrible poker face.

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  5. I mean, some of those are justifiable. Perhaps you thought she was scared of the rock and the flower, but there was something weird that her super sensitive nose picked up. Trust her, she’ll keep you safe. #teamhannah

    Things that freaked Mulder out:
    A person carrying an open umbrella
    A fire hydrant
    A person doing tai chi in a parklet
    A person doing squats in a parklet
    Ted walking up the stairs backwards with a creepy smile on his face (he was doing this to get a rise out of Mulder, so well done I guess)
    A toddler
    The (very handsome) dog with no smell in our bedroom (aka, the mirror) - to be fair, this was just the day we first brought him home

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