One hour. Depending on your situation, one hour can be a short amount of time or, for instance, if you're watching a terrible movie with 60 minutes left to go before you get any sort of reprieve, then it seems like an eternity. One hour before you have to be in class, at work, or in a meeting goes by pretty quickly. One hour before you can leave work, class, or a meeting goes by very slowly. Right now, I'm going through what feels like the longest hour of my life.
For those of you who own dogs and wonder what your little bundles of furry joy do all day while you're at work, I hope the answer is "nothing much of note" or "sleep and wait to greet you enthusiastically when you arrive home." For the dogs in my neighborhood, what they do all day is bark. At nothing. Constantly.
The dog next door has been barking now for an hour straight. He's starting to sound a bit hoarse. (Not horse, because if that was the case and he was neighing I would gladly go next door when the owners got home and propose some sort of daytime talk show circuit tour and book/endorsement deal while only asking for 20%. After all, they feed and clean up after the dog; I just discovered the talent.) But no. This dog is barking. Still barking. Barking at something only he finds stressful. He's a chihuahua mix breed, and while I must concede that I have plenty of friends who own tiny little dogs and love them very much and enjoy the shit (not literally) out of them, the barking of the littlest yappers, to my ears, is excruciating.
The houses in our neighborhood (planned community, perhaps I should say) are all packed in tightly. Our backyard butts up against the backyards of five other houses. Two of those yards contain chihuahuas. Both of those dogs bark incessantly. The good news is they usually take turns: Yesterday the neighbor directly behind us had some sort of chihuahua episode that encourage the little bugger to bark on and off for about five hours. Not exaggerating. Today, it's the chihuahua right next door...the one who is often seen roaming freely around the neighborhood and trying to hump any dog, male or female, that crosses his path. He once followed us to the park when we were taking RC's Boston Terrier to play frisbee and he did nothing but chase her backside and try to mount up. She, being a single-minded terrier, wasn't having any of it. She wanted her frisbee and only her frisbee, and she put that little Cassanova right in his place.
He's been barking for an hour plus the time it's taken me to write this. No other dogs are joining in, though the pit bull in another yard occasionally speaks once or twice. I can't tell what the pit bull is saying, but I assume it's the canine equivalent of "Dude. SHUT. UP."
Oh, now we're moving onto yelping. The dog is now yelping, and the dog lover in me feels bad because I know this is the sound of a dog who doesn't get enough exercise/attention/whatever else he needs. But the cranky pregnant woman in me wants to go leave a note on their front door that explains the next time my ears are assaulted with constant yapping I will be forced to kick the owners in the shins until bruising occurs. It's not the dog's fault it's irritating, after all.
Newsflash: The pit bull has spoken...and for the moment, all is silent. I don't know whether to celebrate by doing a jig or by taking a nap in silence. Let me think...yep, nap.
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