It’s been a pleasant early fall where I live—warm, but not too warm, chilly in the mornings. I’ve been enjoying my two weeks’ vacation from the blog, finishing up those outdoor tasks that come around every autumn and visiting with my neighbors who are also outside working on their seasonal chores.
I had to chuckle when I got a heads-up from one neighbor about a dog who’d be visiting soon—her son’s—”some sort of a bulldog that barks,” my neighbor says, “in a very loud and unusual voice!”
We’d been discussing issues with our neighborhood’s dogs.
One nearby household has a dog—small, I think (I can’t see their yard from mine)—who barks … not constantly, but close to that. It barks every time my back door is opened or closed (it can’t see my back yard), regardless of who goes out or comes in, me or my dog. That’s been happening since the new family moved to the house a couple of years ago. The dog is outside frequently, unsupervised; occasionally a human’s voice is heard after the barking stops, telling the dog to be quiet.
I’m used to it. My dog is used to it. He doesn’t bark back. I often respond, quietly: “It’s still the same door.” I don’t imagine the barking dog’s humans can hear me, but if they do, what do they think? If other dogs visit us, I supervise closely when they are outside. I do not want any dog I know to get into the habit of responding with barking to the barks of a dog who lives nearby. Not on my watch.
A new development in our neighborhood dog issues is the addition of another player on the other side of the block. She’s young, she’s recent, she’s inside a chain-link fence right next to the sidewalk. She’s barked at passersby since the day that she arrived. She’s escaped her front yard and chased cars to the next corner, running up the middle of the street. She is usually unsupervised. If her barking eventually bothers someone in the house, by its volume or duration, someone might come out to stand at the front door and yell at the dog to get inside.
She does not come when she is called.
Why should she?
Photo by Amy Suggars
What goes on for that dog inside that house, I cannot guess. I can state that, in months, I have not heard a kind word said to that dog outside. I have not seen a human pet her … nor touch her. That dog’s life seems to be spent waiting to “attack” passersby who approach her fence—racing to get there, flinging herself hard against the chain-link, growling throatily, barking furiously, until the passersby depart.
Rehearsing the behavior.
She’s gotten “good” at it.
Is that why she’s recently been allowed in the back yard where the dog I can’t see in its yard comes unglued when it hears or smells her near? It makes no sense. It’s the perfect storm for a fence fight.
Both dogs, the one that’s been rehearsing flinging herself at passersby and the one that alerts to any change in the environment with a wary “warning” bark—both dogs explode into paroxysms of insane noise, leaving the neighbors who hear it wondering how secure the fence between the dogs is.
They truly sound as if they could reach each other, they would fight furiously.
Their humans seem stupefied. They stand at a distance, yelling at their dogs.
The dogs start viciously barking at each other then, for a second, they are silent—it is during the seconds the dogs are silent that a human yells so angrily, “Stop that!” Better yet (I joke), even more confusing: when the human wants his dog to come to him, he yells as if he hates the dog.
When we’re discussing this new fence-fighting issue, I tell my neighbor that I wonder if listening to a recording of themselves “commanding” their dogs might help these humans change their tunes.
I think of that clearly impractical suggestion a few days later when something occurs that causes me to wish I had both an audio and a video recording of it—an incident that makes me very sad.
I was standing on my front porch, watching a friend walk her dog, on leash, to her car that was parked in my driveway, halfway to my house. She’d just opened a back door, asked her dog to hop in when, what appears running at top speed up the sidewalk toward her—the dog who lunges at passersby.
I called out for my friend to get her dog into the car, which she did just as the lunger got there.
One saving grace in this sad situation was that the lunger was simply just too short to jump into my friend’s car—that and a calm reaction from my friend and from her excellent dog kept them safe. I don’t think the intention of the “attacking” dog was truly to fight or to bite. The dog has likely had so few opportunities to make actual contact with a passerby, dog or human, that it had never rehearsed that possibility. It did what it had done so many times behind a fence—chase and lunge.
I could not see the gate on the dog’s yard but, with the evidence that the dog was running loose, I’d have to guess the gate must not have been closed or latched. The dog’s human must have been standing right there when the dog ran out. He came after the dog, although not moving as fast. He started yelling about the time the dog made it to my friend’s car. I’ll summarize how that worked out.
His dog turned away from him and ran in the opposite direction, into the street.
From my porch, I said, loudly enough for the human to hear, something like, “Maybe if you sounded as if you really liked her?” After asking my friend if both she and her dog were okay—they were—I sighed with great relief, “That could have been so dangerous!” My friend knew I was right.
My neighbor didn’t, I guess. He never looked toward my friend. He said nothing to her.
No excuses, no apology—no acknowledgement of responsibility. He was so angry at us.
In low dudgeon, he stalked off, spitting over his shoulder at me: “Mind your own business!”
My driveway, my friend … how could he even dare to say something so patently ridiculous?
I replied, as coolly as I could, adding the “sir” to show some respect: “It is my business, sir.”
Dangerous? You may know a dog who’s suffered a surprise attack by another dog, with physical injuries and/or emotional trauma that can last a lifetime. You may know a child or vulnerable senior who’s been caught in the middle of such a dog vs. dog situation that’s left scars which don’t heal.
Is it not my business to be concerned about what could happen when dogs run loose?
I think my neighbor’s dog’s behavior embarrasses him and that makes him very angry.
His anger is not making his dog’s behavior better, but my neighbor doesn’t see that.
I think he feels entitled to vent his anger on the dog, as if the dog fully deserves it.
He’s clearly missing a very obvious conclusion: What he’s doing is certainly not working.
Our neighborhood’s dog issues are generally not as fraught with such unkind human behavior, I’m grateful to observe. Most of our neighbors treat their canine family members with great care and consideration, much like they treat the humans who live around them—fairly and kindly. When what they’re doing isn’t working, the humans take the time and effort to try another way to solve the problem—positively, if possible, without anger and recriminations. I’m looking forward now to seeing (or hearing?) how the dogs on our block will react to the “loud and unusual” vocalizations from my nice neighbor’s son’s dog during their Thanksgiving visit, as I appreciate her “warning” with a chuckle.
Good fences make good neighbors, as a poet said, but good neighbors keep their gates latched, don’t tell their dogs to “Shut up!” when the dogs are silent, and don’t let their anger and embarrassment at their dog’s bad behavior stand in the way of trying a more positive approach.
It *is* my business and it’s yours, too, when it’s happening where you live.
