Our neighbors keep calling the police on our dogs. I wish they’d just knock on our door. Dog arrest has become common, dogs disturbing the peace the crime de jour around here in the Silicon Valley Outback. So John and I are out walking the dogs in the hills on Saturday morning and a police car pulls up real slowly. The pretty female officer rolls down her window and says she recognizes the “suspects” from the description taken at the station. Please. Did they actually do police sketches? Just five minutes earlier the dogs could not have been acting more terribly in spite of all their lessons. They’d been howling at everything, straining the leashes, the hair on their backs bristling—John yelling commands—and terrorizing everyone we came across, except for the little dogs, who scare them. But as soon as this officer steps out of her car with her long shapely legs, the dogs are mesmerized (they like women), and are so charming, licking her hand, the solid black Zar looking at her in that very cute way that shows the whites of his eyes. “Oh, we have one just like this black one at the station,” the officer coos, Zar practically batting his eyes, and I tell her about the coyote den behind our house (true story—at night it sounds like a coven of witches), and how these dogs are trying to protect the neighbors, and she really wants to believe us (police officers love dogs), and I swear she was going to give them a medal before we were on our way.