When I sat down to write this column, it occurred to me that I still had shampoo in my hair even though it’s been over twenty hours since I stepped out of the shower. I had planned to write about the antics of my dog Henry to coincide with the release of my children’s book based on him, but Henry isn’t on my mind today.

That’s because last night a snarling man with two of his own dogs showed up at my front door while I was taking a shower. He arrived moments after our water pump seized up and stopped outputting water. I was contemplating how to get the shampoo out of my hair when my nine-year-old daughter burst into the bathroom and said, “The guy with the scary dogs is pounding on the door.”

Not understanding what she meant, I asked her to close the bathroom door, which is adjacent to the front door. My daughter, who was getting increasingly frantic, couldn’t process the “close the bathroom door” part of the equation. She left the room, keeping the door open, then quickly returned, keeping the door open, to tell me, “He’s still there, Mom. What should I do?”

Having no idea what to tell her, I reached for a towel and got out of the shower. The man took this as his cue to start yelling. Through his rant, I could hear that the pump had fixed itself and the shower was running again.

Perhaps I should have called the police. Instead, I left the shower on and went outside in my towel and sudsy hair and yelled back. In my front yard, I channeled a crazed, towel-clad woman. I think I got confused for a moment and thought I had just won the role of the uppity housewife in The Martha’s Vineyard Horror Movie.

I’ve had run-ins with this man before: One of his dogs once tried to bite Henry, and we’ve had words about the fact that he doesn’t keep them on leashes while walking around other dogs and children. This time, he had a grievance to air. He accused me of obstructing a walking trail behind our house by placing sticks across it. In fact, I hadn’t done it, but even if I had, isn’t it a little odd to go up to someone’s front door and yell at them when they’re taking a shower? I just don’t think you’re supposed to do that.

The incident ended after the slinging of high-pitched vocals and insults. No one got hurt. He took his dogs (for the record, they were on leashes) and stomped off into the woods with my words, “By the way, what’s your name?” trailing behind him and his hounds. I went inside, turned off the shower, which was still running, and got dressed.

I’ve spent the last day trying to figure out how to process what happened. I suppose I could begin by washing the shampoo out of my hair.

Henry, the Dog with No Tail (Simon & Schuster/Paula Wiseman Books) comes out in October.