Every so often I take my friends dog, Pepper, out for a walk in the afternoon. Yesterday was one such day. I arrived at their place to discover I had completely forgotten their alarm code. Having too much confidence in myself I decided to jog my memory by looking at the key pad, “now which buttons do my fingers usually press”. It worked, I remembered the numbers but not the order. By this point at least half a minute had gone by.

I decided to call Ryan, reached in my pocket to grab my mobile and instead I grabbed a pocket full of fluff. Oh No! I had left it at home charging, the one time I need it I don’t have it. I used to be known to leave my mobile at home on frequent occasions. This frustrated Ryan immensely as he doesn’t like the idea of not being able to get in touch with me. So over the past few months I have been making a conscience effort to keep it on my person. Obviously this failed miserably yesterday.

Anyway, I thought “well it’s OK I can use the house phone”. As I reached for it this screeching noise surrounded the entire apartment, crap the alarm. Poor Pepper was freaking out at this point, the noise was too much for her. I took her into the hall with the house phone in hand and tried to call Ryan. Unfortunately, the line was cut and I couldn’t call out. By this point I was seriously panicking, how do turn this thing off? I racked my brain once again for the order of the numbers, it wasn’t coming to me. Finally, after a few minutes the high pitched noise turned itself off. Relief!

Now I seriously needed to get the code. I had no idea if the alarm would go off again. Grabbed Pepper’s lead and sprinted home, luckily Ryan and I live a few minutes walk away. Pepper was getting ultra excited. Half way home and Pepper decided she needed to do a number one and a “huge” number two. Great timing! Luckily for me I still had one dog bag in my pocket.

That over with, I continued my way home with this seriously smelly dog bag in hand. As we neared the park Pepper started going insane, “no Pepper we can’t play now”. To make matters worse the shortest route is right through the park. Pepper is pulling me every which way trying to get my attention that she wants to play. After dragging her out of the park, much to her disappointment, I tied her up outside the front door and sprinted up stairs. Called Ryan and he gave me the code. How could I have forgotten it?

Hurried back with a very sad looking Pepper, “why aren’t we playing?”. I had no idea how the alarm system worked. Would the police be called to investigate? I had many disturbing visions like being dragged off to jail for dog napping!

When I arrived back at my friends place there were no cops outside, no neighbours coming to see what happened, almost like the alarm hadn’t gone off. Once through the front door I punched in the code and the alarm was now disengaged. Called my friend to tell them what happened, man was I embarrassed. He informed where the secret codes were. I called the alarm company to report a false alarm. Sigh of relief I can relax now and Pepper can get her much deserved play with the ball.

Two hours later the alarm company decides they need to do a check on the situation and test the system. In my mind two hours is a little too long of a wait to check up on things. And apparently my friend received no call on his mobile that his alarm had be tripped, hmm curious. Anyway, they did their little test and it turned out that some wires were put in the wrong slots and the alarm wasn’t working properly anyway.

So I guess it was just as well I tripped the alarm and nearly gave myself a heart attack!