(To quote a boss of mine, “This is going to bring rain.”)
A woman posted on a social media neighborhood site that she was unhappy with the people who mean-mugged her house as they passed her barking dogs. She asked them for an itinerary so that she could provide milk and cookies. The responses to the “OP” (Original Poster) fell into roughly two categories: “What The Fooey,” and “Bark On, Barkers.”
I was amused by the post and thought of the dogs on my walks through the neighborhood. There is a great barking afoot, while I am … afoot. The dog that lives near my house no longer yaps at me when it is in its back yard, but when I pass the front of its house, I can hear it rapping, yapping, and scratching at the window, warning its owners about people walking on the street. As I proceed down that street, I pass a house that has, not a yapper, but a woofing dog, deep tones bellowing out the danger of the person 100 feet away. Four houses west of one corner, a dog in the front yard bays out the alarm that someone is walking down the street. Farther down that street, two dogs slam against a chain-link fence and howl at my passage. Across the street, other dogs clamor, sounding the alarm that people are alive in the world.
I’ve had one dog in my life and my bride let me choose an Irish Setter. I taught Duffy to sit, stay; lie down, speak, and get out of the kitchen while the family was eating. Oh: and to adore our daughter, Lisa. But he almost never barked. He would give a half-hearted woof if someone rang the doorbell, as if to say, “You guys wanna get that?” But he never barked at squirrels or birds, nor at the people he could see passing on the street. Before you say that an Irish Setter is a chill dog, let me tell you — in the right situation, Duffy would get after you. One evening as the family sat on the back deck, Duffy stood up; I watched in amazement as the hair on the scruff of his neck rose. He was staring at the back gate, and I managed to grab him just as he took off toward it. The person who was coming into the yard never knew that the Duffer was going after them. On another occasion he alerted me to the bandits who were stealing my neighbor’s stuff from his open garage. When my dog barked, there was danger, Will Robinson.
One of the supporters of the neighborhood page poster said something to the effect that dogs can smell fear, implying that was the reason they barked. Smelling fear through a foot and a half of wall is an incredible feat, even for Rin Tin Tin. I guess we stink, stank, stunk. Another responder claimed that the police department recommended barking dogs as a crime deterrent. Maybe some genius can come up with a motion sensor that lights up and barks when a potential bandit passes. One of the houses in my neighborhood is on a bustling street that sees millions of cars and thousands of people per day. This house used to have a motion sensor activated light that beamed when I passed. I enjoyed making my own Tik Tok, walking forward and backward and activating the light. (No one ever put me on blast on the neighborhood page, though.)
Yo, dog: go on with your bark self. And make your momma proud.
cjon3acd@att.net