By Grace Toohey
Los Angeles Times
SAN DIEGO, Calif. — While Dante Rowley and his fiancée were out of town during one of the most brutal heat waves of the year, a man broke into their San Diego home through an open upstairs window.
The intruder might have been deterred by the couple’s two dogs — except that neither canine acted like a traditional guard dog.
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One simply went outside through a doggy door, while the other tried to engage the man, walking up to him repeatedly with toys in mouth, tail wagging.
“Our dog tried to play with him,” Rowley said, laughing. “He’s super friendly.”
Lucky for Rowley, the man didn’t do much while he was inside, appearing to take a nap and eat some food from the fridge before police arrived, according to security footage video that Rowley shared with The Times. The incident was first reported by NBC 7 San Diego.
“We just think he was trying to get out of the heat,” Rowley said of the man, who was arrested about an hour later, according to video. San Diego police did not respond to questions from The Times.
Usually Nash, their friendly golden retriever, jumps and barks at new visitors, Rowley said, but once they get inside, “he just thinks it’s time to play.”
Nash appeared pretty calm the entire time the man was inside the home, video showed, despite the circumstances.
The prowler, whom police didn’t identify, was first recorded hopping over the fence before retrieving a ladder so he could enter through an open upstairs window. He then rested and snacked and talked to himself for more than an hour, even as police circled the home, called for him to exit and sent a drone inside to search for him, video shows.
Rowley and his fiancée, Stephanie Calderon, watched almost the entire incident in real time from their security cameras as they were traveling back from Chicago.
“We were just like, ‘What is going on right now?’” Rowley said.
Despite Nash attempting to play, the man never engaged with the dog.
At one point when the man went upstairs, the couple tried to speak through the security system and encourage Nash to go outside. But he stayed put.
“We were just concerned about the dog, really,” Rowley said. “We were just really happy that the dog was safe afterward.”
Besides the eaten snacks and some outdoor pots that broke during the burglar’s attempted escape, Rowley said nothing was stolen and there was no damage to the home.
This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.
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