The other night, as Seth slept soundly snored loudly on his dog bed in the family room, and Ryder snuggled next to me on the couch, I got up and went to the kitchen to make myself some dinner.

As I washed my hands in the sink, I looked outside the window to our backyard and saw a dog sniffing around. A dog who looked just like Seth.

Trying to convince myself I wasn’t crazy, I ran back into the family room to make sure both Seth and Ryder were, in fact, right where I thought they were. Seeing that they hadn’t moved from their respective sleeping spots, I said to Steve, “There’s a dog in the backyard that looks just like Seth!”

We immediately grabbed our snow boots, winter jackets, gloves (hey, it was freezing out), a leash – and treats, of course – and ventured outside. The dog was still in our yard, and didn’t seem startled to see me, so I waved a treat in front of her (him? I wasn’t sure) and called her over to me.

She came right away. I didn’t recognize her from around the neighborhood, but she looked healthy and clean, and had a cute striped collar on (pink, so I went ahead with assuming she was a girl). The name on her tag was Fuzzy.

As she took the treat from my hand, I put the leash on her and started walking around to the front of our house. Steve had gone back inside to get his cell phone. We called the two phone numbers listed on her tag. No answer at either one. Thinking it was just too cold to stay outside with her and wait, Steve went back inside again to bring Ryder and Seth out to meet Fuzzy, to make sure that bringing her in the house wouldn’t cause any friction.

Ryder and Seth are pretty chill when it comes to meeting new dogs (except puppies – Ryder has absolutely no patience for puppies), so the meeting was pretty uneventful. We decided to bring Fuzzy inside the house to try calling her family again, or wait for her family to call back.

Once inside, I got a closer look at Fuzzy and really couldn’t get over the resemblance between her and Seth. Except for the fact that Seth has a good 30 lbs. on her, and has some brown in his paws, they looked so very similar.

Here’s Fuzzy:

Here’s Seth (on the right, waiting for a treat. Ryder is on the left):

And just as photographic evidence that Fuzzy and Seth are, in fact, not the same dog, here is a picture of the two of them sniffing each other (Fuzzy is on the left, Seth is on the right, and Ryder is in the background):

Fuzzy’s visit ended up being a short one. Soon after these photos were taken, her family got in touch with us from our phone message and came to pick her up. She lives right around the block.

She was a good houseguest. I told her if she had been human, I would have offered her some nice hot cocoa.  But given the fact that she was of the canine variety, she seemed perfectly happy settling for some dog treats. Ryder and Seth didn’t even mind having to share (too much). Maybe we’ll invite her over again sometime. We’ll let her know she won’t have to sneak into the backyard. She can use the front door next time.