Gone to the Dogs

My neighborhood is, I think, representative of the state of the nation. Perhaps the world.

And yes, “That guy” disclaimer. I fully admit I’ve become “that guy.” The “You kids get off my lawn” guy. Something happens when you hit 50. You realize you went 49 years resenting your father, then you hit 50 and bam: Overnight you’ve magically become everything you hated about him.

But that’s a topic for another blog.

My wife and I have lived in Mendota Heights, Minnesota, for eight years. For that entire time, a family two doors down has had a dog named Allie. Allie barks constantly. At nothing in particular. Allie suffers from that weird “Little Dog Syndrome” where the smaller they are, the more they bark in what I can only assume is an effort to overcompensate. Hey, a leaf. Bark bark bark. Hey, a squirrel. Bark bark bark. Hey, existence. Bark bark…

You get the idea.

Since Allie was the only noisy dog in the ‘hood, her barking was tolerable if annoying. But then, a year or so ago, a woman moved in who apparently fosters dogs. Apocryphal tales whispered over picket fences reveal that the woman has anywhere between four and six dogs at any given time. She releases the hounds into her yard several times per day to allow them to do their bidness, and while outside the dogs bark. And not in the playful, Purina commercial way. At first, my wife and I thought that Michael Vick had moved into our quaint suburb. When these dogs play, it sounds like they’re ripping each other to shreds.

This, in turn, stirs up Riley, the dog owned by Denny, the psychotic lawn-mowing guy, who himself will also be a topic for another blog. Riley’s barking stirs up the dog owned by the people who live next to Denny, who themselves are a topic for another blog.

(As you can see, this blog will serve as a surrogate for therapy. You’re welcome. And I’m acutely aware I sound like David Berkowitz. Calm down. Even if I had visions of becoming a serial killer, at age 55 I can barely muster the will and energy necessary to walk across the street and grab the mail.)

Returning to the topic at hand, dogs, a young family recently moved into the house directly behind my wife and I. We met them before they moved in and the wife/mother, Allie (no relation to the aforementioned yapping dog, merely a coincidence) warned us that they own a dog, and “She’s a barker.” This of course filled my household with trepidation. But we were pleasantly surprised when, for the first week after they moved in, the dog was quiet.

But then, of course, Allie (the human, not the dog) and her husband decided that the best way to address their dog’s anxiety is to tie her up in the yard and allow her to bark. On the rare occasions Allie stops barking, the family looks at her through the picture window, which causes the poor dog to bark again. And bark. And bark. For 90 minutes at a time. “Hey, you used to let me in the house. What gives?” My wife and I are animal lovers, preferring animals over people to the nth degree. So we are equal parts angry at the dog and furious at their owners for this situation. An emotionally-fragile animal and your solution is to abandon it in full view of the family. This reeks of one of those freaky psychological experiments they conducted before government became fully transparent.

Yes, that was a joke.

So now my wife and I are in a quandary. Do we approach these families and plead our case, risking being tarnished with the scarlet letter “T” for Those people? Do we take the coward’s way out and call the police? After all, local statues state that five minutes of barking equates to an infraction. And it's not like Mendota Heights police are running themselves ragged addressing the crime wave sweeping the city. I believe the worst infraction the past couple years was a matronly woman detained at Walgreen's for stealing one of those plastic eggs containing panty hose, and it turns out she simply didn't realize it was hidden at the bottom of her reusable shopping bag.

My overarching point, I guess, is that I can’t help but compare my neighborhood to society at large. When I was a kid—yes, “WIWAK alert—there were unstated rules. My dad drilled into my head that before doing anything, you need to consider how it might impact others. I remember washing my car in the driveway blasting the radio, age 16, not a care in the world, and dad came raging out of the garage. “Turn that down!” he roared. “Do you want to piss off the neighbors?”

(My dad would never have said “piss off,” by the way. A good, Christian man, he surely said something more G-rated. “Gosh darn you, Thomas. Turn down that darn rock music! You want the neighbors to think you worship Satan?” And while I can’t recall exactly what my father said, I do remember specifically that the song playing was “Hurts So Good” by John Mellencamp. Definitely not of the devil-worship genre, but it was arguably an even worse message by my dad’s own standards and he seemed to miss it entirely.)

I’ve struggled with the closing paragraph, writing and deleting it a half-dozen times. Wrapping projects up has always been my Achilles heel, be it novels, blogs, or college essays. (That’s why I’ll probably never commit suicide, btw, because I won’t know how to wrap up the note. "Goodbye, cruel world." Nah, too cliché. "Screw you all!" Nah, too confrontational. "This is the end, my beautiful friend." Nah, plagiarism. I don't want my widowed wife to face a lawsuit from Ray Manzarek's heirs.)

Everything I’ve written, no matter how I tart it up, makes me sound like an asshole. And maybe that’s the overarching point. Am I the asshole? I have no idea if the comments section of this blog is open, but if it is and if anyone actually reads this post, anonymous people are bound to come out of the woodwork and let me know in no uncertain terms that “Yes, you are the asshole!” Well, thanks pussylover227. Thanks for taking time out from gaming in mom's basement to chime in. Your opinion means the world to me and is sure to help me grow as a person. 

The sun is slowly peeking over the trees and already it begins. Bark…bark bark… If I had Douglas Adams’s “Babel Fish,” I wonder if I would hear “Asshole! Asshole! Asshole!”