The Case of the Barking Dog

Ok, I think I'm losing my mind. I'm starting to hear barking dogs where there are none. In my line of work, we call these auditory hallucinations. If you somehow ended up meeting me professionally (and that would be because you'd been admitted to a psych ward), we would be giving you heavy doses of anti-psychotics. Because hearing things isn't normal.

Which is why I'm getting to be a little worried. You see, it all started out with my darn neighbor. She makes flutes. And for some reason she thinks that the only place in her house to make a flute is on her porch. Which happens to be about 100 yards away from my backyard. And for some reason, my dog doesn't care for the flute making process and spent quite a bit of time barking at her. So I spent $1500 putting up a beautiful 6 ft wood fence so the dog couldn't see the flute maker.

This actually works most of the time. But dogs being dogs, like to protect their home, and when the neighbor is out in the garden, the dog likes to bark at her. Well, as you can imagine, that got me a few more notes about my barking dog being a nuisance. I wasn't sure how to solve this, since how do you keep a dog from barking at someone through a window? The one time animal control was called on me, he said my dogs were being perfectly quiet when he got there. And that's what I always find when I come home. Perfectly quiet dogs. So this, I think is the beginning of my insanity.

Fast forward a year, and animal control is back at my house, but this time it's to put a dog under quarantine because I've been bit. They find out I have too many animals. Did you know that 3 cats and 5 dogs is too many? (2 of the dogs are foster dogs, but apparently that doesn't count). So I have to apply for a "permit." But while they're there, a friendly neighbor runs out and tells animal control that my dogs bark "all day and all night." Animal control tells me it looks unlikely I'll get a permit if that's true, and 2 dogs are gonna have to go. So I spend days talking to various neighbors, trying to make peace and see what I can do to make things right. Because there's no way my dogs are barking all night. I wouldn't be sleeping if that were true. And every single neighbor I talk to tell me my dogs don't bark and don't bother them. Even the flute maker. And everyone of them say they will testify this to animal control.

So 10 days later, when animal control shows back up to see that neither I nor the dog who bit me has developed rabies, they tell me that they were not able to substantiate the barking dog issue. I can get my "permit." Seems they talked to my neighbors and they said my dogs were just fine. But since I have just spent 10 days hypervigilant about every single little bark, I'm pretty wired for sound. I can relax now. I have my permit in hand and a letter from animal control saying my dogs don't bark. But you know what? For the last 2 nights, when all of the dogs were sleeping in my bedroom, I swore I heard a dog bark downstairs.

Now I'm really losing it.