The Dog That Did Bark

There's nothing like making a great big jerk out of yourself.

It was early in the morning, for me anyway, around 9:00 a.m. or so, and I was writing something under deadline. I suppose that alone had me a bit irritable.

Then, the dog behind me started barking. And barking. And it kept barking, incessantly. On and on. After about a half an hour or so I'd had enough and I marched around the block to the neighbor's house to ask them to please keep the dog quiet. I promised myself I'd be nice, but I felt like I was ready to just let go.

But they weren't even home. I think that irritated me all the more, so I marched back home steaming all the way about having work to do, sat down, and wrote a note that told them in no uncertain terms what I thought about the whole dog barking situation. Let's just say the letter was direct and leave it at that.

It's hard to explain, but I live on a cul-de-sac, and to get to the neighbor's house you take a path that runs between two of the houses on the circle. It cuts through from the cul-de-sac to another street, and then you do the same thing a bit up the road to get to the other house where the dog was.

So I did that, the second trip, this time with the letter, and I taped it to their door. I don't know when they got it, but eventually the dog did stop barking, probably after about another 20 minutes.

Almost immediately, I started feeling bad about how I'd reacted, but it was too late to do much about it as I figured the neighbors had already seen the letter. So I tried to finish the thing I was writing and meet the deadline (which I did).

That was all between around 9 and 10. At noon, there was a knock on my door. I was afraid to answer it, but I did, and - yes - it was the neighbor. But not the neghbor with the dog, another one, one that lives right next to the path I talked about above. She asked if I'd seen or heard anything that morning becasue sometime between 8 and 12 their house had been burlarized, and they lost most everything of value, the computer, the silver, you name it (this is one house away from my next door neighbor, so it's close).

The neighbor dog is sometimes annoying, but never like it was that morning, and now I think it was probably barking at the people burglarzing the house. The dog was up on a deck, so it could have seen the house that was burglarized. And I walked right by there twice, maybe while this was going on. I can't be sure that's what the dog was barking at, but it sure seems to fit. I feel like I should have noticed.

I eventually did apologize to the neighbors. As I said, the dog is annoying sometimes, and I really do wish they'd keep it quieter, but I told them that if it's making noise because someone's house is getting burglarized, well, I can live with that.

Guess I'll also have to live with the dumb things I manage to do.