Our secret service detail

I have this pet peeve about my personal space. If a stranger at the grocery store is standing behind me in the checkout line, and they're closer than say, 2 feet away...it makes me crazy. I hate being tail-gated. In the car or in person. Like, at the mall, sometimes speed-walkers will come up behind you, then not pass. Instead they breathe down your neck and nip your heels. I can't TELL you how insane this makes me.

Well, even at home, in my personal sanctuary, I have a tailgater. Her name is Lucy, and she looks like this...
Lucy is an Australian Shepherd, and I have read that this breed is nicknamed "the Velcro dog". If Lucy could crawl inside my skin to cuddle, she would. When I go to the bathroom, and shut the door, she's often following so closely her nose gets smashed. When I walk from the closet to the chest of drawers to put laundry away and take one step backwards, I WILL step on her.

There are some days I can deal, and there are some days I just can't. Like trash day. She gets super anxious when she hears trash trucks coming down the street, and her normal following distance increases from 2 feet to 6 inches. This is accompanied by panting and drooling...on my heels. I want to bang my head against the wall.

I think I can understand how the president's family feels when they are constantly stalked by the secret service. Lucy is my personal secret service detail. For a while I thought she would transfer the guard duty to Jonah.
I think he must have played rough with her one too many times so she decided to guard him from a distance, and resume stalking me.