Tuesday, January 14, 2014

The Err Of The Dog

Ann, the black shepherd, has made a crucial error in judgement.

I don't expect pets to be humans. They're animals, by cracky! And they're gonna act like animals. Goats gonna butt, turkey's gonna strut, chickens gonna peck, and dogs gonna bark. At midnight. At two. At four. At six. Our dogs might be near the Guinness Record for annoying, intermittent barking. I don't know for sure, because none of the three have shared their correspondence with the Guinness record-recorders.

This morning, right at 5:30, as I left the shower and headed to Farmer H's La-Z-Boy for my chair nap, Ann started barking. Right on the front porch, below the picture window. Across from the La-Z-Boy. The other two flea-bags had the good sense to remain in-house. Ann is not a normal barker. She's more of a baur baur baur kind of barker. But not at regular intervals. More like baur...baur.........baur.....baur...baur.............. baur............baur. I'm always waiting for the next shoe to drop. I can tune out that constant woofing, but not the stop-and-start baur-bauring.

It used to be effective when the #1 son tapped on his window glass and told her to shut up. Now, no amount of window-tapping makes a dent in Ann's antics. I SO wanted to yank that door open and scream, "BAD! DOG!" Okay. I did that. But what I really wanted to do was whack her. Alas, we do not receive a newspaper. Had it been high summer, I would have dashed a bowl of water in her face. But I can't do that at 22 degrees. Not even to annoying Ann.

Seriously. I will break her of this habit. And I'm not going to use Mr. Shocky, the borrowed collar which broke her of chicken-killing. I'm getting a SuperSoaker, and come summer, I will gladly arise at the crack of 5:30 to pulse water into Ann's gaping maw. Cruel? I think not. People have cured car-chasing dogs with this method. It's not as cruel as having your car-chasing dog run over and killed by your own mother.

Ann needs to zip it. Or I'm gonna let it drip.

4 comments:

Sioux Roslawski said...

Poor Ann. She's just doing her job. There was probably a blowing leaf that she had to warn you about...

Hillbilly Mom said...

Sioux,
Or she got a whiff of other dogs' anuses up the road.

Kathy's Klothesline said...

Wall-E is our most annoying barker. He has a Chihuahua bark, very high pitched. It makes one's spine tingle and you entertain fantasies of choking the little white dog, his squirming body dangling from my hands as he continues to choke out a strangling yip, yip yip. It is really annoying. I employ a flyswatter to discourage his behavior. I only have to say the word "flyswatter" and he slinks to the floor and slithers on his belly to find a safe place to hide. Do you suppose he can read my mind?

Hillbilly Mom said...

Kathy,
Wall-E is what we call around here...a little yippy dog. We think Ann used to eat them. We found two tiny collars in our front yard.