All in the Way Curious homeowners and their pesky dogs. by Walter Jowers hen co-inspector Rick and I drive up to a house, there are two things we hope we don't see: a retired guy at the front door and a dog in the backyard. We don't have anything against retired people. We wouldn't mind retiring one day ourselves. The problem with having a retired guy at a home inspection is, he's going to want to help. Retired men are interested in interaction. I can't blame 'em. Given the choice between watching Live with Regis and Kathie Lee, and hanging out with a couple of guys who walk into my house and whip out a briefcase full of Ghostbuster-looking gadgets, I'd hang with the guys. If Rick and I didn't have to keep to a schedule, we'd be happy to open up a bag of chips, pop open some fine imported beers, and spend all day demonstrating the tools for the curious retired homeowners. We can't do that, so we do this: We wait for a moment when the guy's a little distracted, then we make a dash for the outside. We grab the binoculars out of the car, train them on the highest point on the house, then shake our heads and look very concerned. Rick pretends to write down some notes. I shrug. Rick shakes his head some more. Then we move on. We know, of course, that the homeowner's been watching all this through a window. We know that as soon as we move on, he's going to come outside, maybe packing his own set of binoculars, and try his best to figure out what got us so worried. With any luck, he'll stay out there staring at the top of the house until we're done with the job. Sometimes, as we're getting ready to leave, the homeowner guy will ask us what we saw up there. "Airplane," I tell 'em. "I say it was an L-1011. Rick says DC-10." The first problem with backyard dogs is, they booby-trap the yard with their annoying turds. We have to look up at the house, and down at the ground, all at the same time. Half the time, we end up standing in our socks, blasting poop off our shoes with the garden hose. The second problem is, the dogs want to play. We enjoy a good ball-playing dog, and we've been known to take a five-minute break just to play throw-and-fetch. A time comes, though, when we have to move on. And the dogs won't fall for that binoculars-and-head-shaking trick. Last week, we walked into a backyard and were immediately intercepted by a hyperactive collie, with a head the size and shape of a traffic cone. The pesky dog went back and forth, in half-second intervals, between trying to put its paws on our shoulders and nose-drooling all over our shoes. At the end of the job, Rick put on the coveralls and knee pads, grabbed the giant yellow flashlight, and headed for the crawl space. And, don't you know, the crawl-space hatch was in the collie's backyard. The dog ran up to Rick and started up again: shoulders-shoes-shoulders-shoes. When Rick got on his hands and knees to open the crawl-space door, the dog took that as a signal to play harder. Rick fought by the dog, went into the crawl-space, shut the hatch behind him, and went about his inspecting business. About a minute later, the dog forced his queer anteater nose into the crack around the crawl-space hatch, threw the hatch open, and joined Rick in the crawl space. "Damn dog," Rick grumbled. "Every time I'd move, he'd shadow me, like Deion covering Jerry Rice. Bouncing up and down on his paws and barking, wanting to play. "Y'know," Rick said, "the last thing in the world I want to do in a crawl space is play." You can e-mail Helter Shelter at walter.jowers@nashville.com.