There was a scary noise last night. I was in bed, asleep or half asleep or some such and it slowly began to dawn on me that the dog was making noise. She was lying on the bed next to me, head up and growling. She doesn’t generally do that, so I woke up myself to find out what was bothering her.

That was when I heard the noise. It was somewhere between a siren and a scream, and it would go from clearly audible to almost imperceptible. It was a horrible uncanny kind of noise. I knew exactly how the dog felt; if I had fur it would have been straight up along my spine right then. Once I’d heard the noise there was no way I could go back to sleep, so Tezykofka and I got up to investigate. I started with the window, which turned out to be closed.

I left the bedroom, Tezy with me, still growling, and the noise got louder. Eventually I traced it down the hall to the front door. I stared out the peephole, afraid of nothing I could explain, and of course the hall was empty. The noise went on. Tezy began to bark. I threw the second deadlock, and shut the second door.

Blessedly, the noise stopped. Maybe it just stopped right then, or maybe the additional door blocked it out. The dog stopped barking immediately, and we went back to bed. I fell asleep with Tezy clutched in my arms like a doll.

In the cheery light of morning, it was obvious that the noise was just some trick of the wind crossing the building foyer. I felt a little foolish.

But this stuck with me: I went toward the scary noise, and the dog went with me. If I was going to beard the lion in its lair, Tezykofka was coming along to defend me. All eight pounds of her. I never had a brave dog before. Average dogs and wimpy dogs. Dogs that feared garbage trucks, passing cars, and strange weather. Lola, my dog in Egypt, who I absolutely adored, would lie in bed and whimper when the wind blew too hard.

Tezy, though – Tezy is all set to defend me to the end. My dad got mad at me a couple of times when I was in Miami, and whenever he did, Tezy would come and stand in front of me and growl whenever he shook his finger. At the vet’s office, she was prepared to attack a golden retriever that looked at me wrong. It makes me feel oddly secure to know that. I mean, what can a three kilo dog do for me? Really gash up someone’s shins? Distract the retriever by being eaten first?

But it’s a good feeling to have a defender.

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USAID is one of many donors for the project I work for. The views expressed herein are the author’s own views and do not necessarily reflect those of the author’s employer or especially those of the United States Agency for International Development or the United States Government. And I mean it. I probably give the US government heart attacks.