When I set off for my morning walk I am always curious about the reception I will receive from the neighborhood’s dogs. On the Pennsy Trail at Arlington, there are two dogs chained in an open yard, who are inconstant in their attentions toward me: sometimes they bark, other times they do not. When I was walking my daughter’s two pit bull dogs, they always barked. Marley and Vada, the gentle souls that they were, would look at their brothers, listen to their complaints, then look at me as if to say, “What’s up with the noisy boys?”
Two dogs live in the house behind my apartment; when there are few leaves on the trees, one beagle-ish dog can see me in the window as I wash my dishes. When he spots me, he sets up a “rooo!” that ends in a “squeak.” This cacophony is sometimes joined by his brother, a lab-ish fellow whose vision may not be as acute, as he does not direct his barks toward my specific location; he’s just joining the chorus. These two will set up a ruckus from inside the house when I pass on the street. I can see them pushing aside the curtains as I pass, saved from their fury by the glass.
I live where dogs live and I have no problems with them; they bark, I look, I walk on. On a side street leading to the Pennsy Trail, there is a house that has one or two dogs; they will mark my passage with an alert observance, but they do not bark at me. At the corner can be found, at times, a German Shepherd, and when he is in the fenced yard, he does not bark at me, though I’m not sure if he might have, at some point.
In Pat Conroy’s novel, “Beach Music,” Jack tells his young daughter stories of his childhood pet, “The Great Dog Chippie.” When Leah refers to the dog in that way to her newly met grandmother, Lucy is confused: “Chippie was a mutt. A stray.” The great dog in my past, an Irish Setter named Duffy, (who was not a stray) joined a family of three and won our hearts. Four-year-old Lisa slept peacefully as I spent the night training the puppy to stay outside, in his little house. For some reason, Duffy became a dog of few barks; I taught him to “speak” on command, but his vocalizations were “ruff.” But the Great Dog Duffy did have one night of wild barking.
The Duffer’s fury awakened me at 4 a.m., and I went into the back yard with him. His rare barks were to alert us to the presence of strangers, so I looked for some; seeing none in the back yard, I brought Duffy into the house, and I walked out front. My next door neighbor’s garage door was open. I called to tell him that, and he grumpily thanked me as he lowered the door. Five minutes after I returned him to the back yard, Duffy went into frenzied barking, again. My neighbor phoned me at 7 a.m. the next morning: he had been robbed. The bandits had taken his golf clubs and other valuables from the garage, and had put the keys to his car into the ignition. Had I not come out front, they would have driven away with the car. I was falsely sympathetic, as he knew that Duffy does not bark at squirrels. He was just doing his job.
And the dogs of my neighborhood are doing their jobs, for — to corrupt Shakespeare — if barking be the alarms of love, bark on.