Bark! Bark! Bark!

VIEWPOINT

By RALPH HARDIN

Evening Times Editor

I’ll bet a lot of you have dogs. I have a dog. No… that’s not entirely accurate. There is a dog that lives at my house that my wife and daughter brought home over my strenuous objections about eight years ago. (In the name of full disclosure, I have brought home numerous unsolicited cats over the years, but that’s not what this is about).

Since the dog’s arrival, he has been a thorn in my side. I often use the completely unprovable statistic that he has reduced my overall happiness by around 10 percent over the years. As a puppy, he chewed up everything… shoes, earbuds, furniture legs, couch pillows — everything but the many chew toys that were purchased for him.

Then the digging started. He must have dug up the whole back yard. Once he figured out he could dig under the fence and escape (to find even more things to dig up or chew on, no doubt), then he added a whole new layer of frustration, mostly because he likes to bark. And when you see a loose dog on the streets, barking no less, you’re likely to become concerned.

And so he started popping up on the Marion Police

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Department’s Facebook page. He’d get out, someone in the neighborhood would post about the “vicious” dog running around and I’d go try and find him. It eventually became a bit of a game, once people realized it was my dog, I’d get a message.

“Your dog’s loose again!”

I’d explain to them that I don’t have a dog, but it didn’t help. We eventually got him fixed and that stopped most of the escaping.

But it did not stop the barking.

Nope, the dog will bark at anyone and anything. Pizza delivery guy? “Bark! Bark!

Bark!” Mailman, UPS delivery or Amazon truck?

“Bark! Bark! Bark!”

(which was, I suppose, handy over the Christmas season for keeping my packages safe from porch pirates) Car pulls into the driveway across the street?

“Bark! Bark! Bark!” Kids playing out in the yard several houses away? “Bark!

Bark! Bark!” Squirrel in the backyard? Birds in the tree? Plastic Walmart sack billowing across the lawn on a windy day? “Bark!

Bark!” freakin’ “Bark!”

Oh, and the howling. I didn’t even know these rat terrier- slash-poodle-slashgremlin things could howl.

At least not until one Saturday when they tested the tornado sirens. He started howling along and now he does it almost every weekend. Did I mention we moved a couple of years ago to a house just down the street from the Marion Fire Station? Guess what he does when they fire up those sirens.

Now, I will say, there was one time when he didn’t bark. In fact, there were three dogs in the house the night my truck was stolen right out of my driveway.

On that night, apparently, none of them felt like barking… OK, I guess it’s possible that they did start barking and we told them to shut up, but you know…

But right now, as I type this, there’s a cat that doesn’t live here sitting on the window sill outside.

And he is, of course, losing his mind.