– A Pomeranian with all of her hair buzzed off. She looked and acted very much like Gizmo, the Mogwai from Gremlins. I crouched down to pet her and she was very friendly. Then she started sniffing at my crotch and I had to stand up so as not to look like a perverted locksmith. She napped in her bed as I replaced her owner’s bad deadbolt lock.

– A Chihuahua. She barked at me from the moment I walked up to the front door until the moment I extended my hand for her to smell, whereupon she lost interest and walked off.

– Two excitable Australian shepherds — siblings, by the owner’s account. One of them was four times the size of the other. The big one sniffed my hand and shambled off. The other one barked at me continuously as I removed a deadbolt. As I was reaching to unscrew a digital lock from high on the door, he bit me.

– A yappy black poodle. I tried to introduce myself when I entered the house, but he backed away, yapping. For every second that I was in the house, the dog was yapping at me. The only respite came when I went to change a lock in the the master bedroom, where apparently the dog had been trained not to enter. Then he yapped from the doorway. Near the end of the job I got fed up and stared him in the eyes as I walked him down. He backed away, yapping at me. Then he ran away, still yapping, and leaving a trail of pee on the hardwood floor. I was embarrassed I’d scared him. And the owner was embarrassed about her yappy dog.