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Monday, May 28, 2012

We cannot hear the barking


Lenny

I am fortunate that the incessantly barking dog in the next door apartment cannot be heard from our apartment. We have big thick doors and walls and almost no sound penetrates.

But every time I leave the apartment – or come back – I can hear it yapping.

Bandit

Now I have nothing against small dogs.  I don’t know why god made them so noisy but I am sure there is a reason – just as I am sure there is a desperate need for Irukandji jellyfish - although it’s hard to see what that could be.

But small dogs I cannot hear do not bother me much. Although I do wonder whether or not my neighbours are deaf. Or is it that after a while they no longer hear the yapping and it just becomes background noise?

I could ask my son Lenny who has two small dogs – but I am sure they are very well behaved. Although the crazy one (also named Lenny) was not present last time I visited. He goes ape any time there are visitors and tries to tear their clothes off and urinate on them. I think he is a Republican.

In Sydney we had – for a time -  the neighbours from hell. They bought the house next door and renovated it from top to bottom. But he ran a building company so they only worked on the house sporadically – when his business was slow.

This meant that a job that could have taken three months took eighteen and we all nearly went stark staring mad in the process.

There would be a lull for a few weeks and then the hammering and sawing and yelling and loud music playing would start up again at dawn. This would go on for a few days and they would go away – possibly for a week – possibly for a month.

Muffin in fact did go mad and licked all the fur off her abdomen and sides. It took her a long time to get furry again and she never recovered fully.

Anyway they had two small dogs who they kept inside while the building work was going on but once it was finished they let them out of the house and they would have barking competitions for about 22 hours per day.

They also sat in their back garden and smoked incessantly (the people not the dogs). Apparently they did not smoke in their house so as not to offend themselves. The smoking and the dogs effectively destroyed our outdoor life and we retreated to our lounge room and then came to Vienna.

Now we only have to worry about the people who take their dogs out each day to defecate on the pavement.



7 comments:

  1. It is a rule here that you must pick up your dog poop or you will get a visit from the city. There are actual businesses that specialize in cleaning up dog poop. My Sammy only barks when he has to poop.

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  2. After six and a half years I feel my Cooper and I understand each other pretty weLL. He does annoy my wife every once in awhile when he is just in the act of making a request. OveraLL he is a good dog, and I remind of that about 5 to 8 times a day. He just came in the living room and requested that I snuggle with him in the bedroom where the wife was already watching teleBision. It is a very good life indeed. But I wonder if a wooly mammoth might be as good of a pet. I am anxious to see how successful the Koreans are going to be in their cloning eXperiment, but the gestation period of an elephant (the surrogute mother) is 22 months, so I must be patient. I am sure I wiLL need to get a slightly sturdier fence for the backyard to handle a wooly mammoth. I am hoping that WM can eat Purina Elephant Food.

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  3. the small ones are the worst. Those yappy buggers get on my moobs.

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  4. With summer upon you, is it quiet on your balcony? Surely they don't keep the dog inside all the time? Well, sorry, I hope they do.

    Our most recent Lilyfield barker is called Buster. Since we pointed his offensive behaviour out to his owner, we've hardly heard anything from him. Which is just as well as Jim was threatening to go barking, mad, that is.

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  5. fmcgmccllc: We have rules here to but they are ignored.

    esb: You will also need a larger bed

    Glen: Exactly

    Annie: Their balcony is pin the other side of the building - so it is very quiet indeed

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  6. We have a cattle dog- Never growls and barks sparingly- usually for the right reasons. Great watch dog. Sadly we also have 2 terriers.. a fox and a tenterfield. The fox terrier is 17 years old and has one monotone bark which she seems to enjoy unleashing when she is standing against a wall. It is a bark that drives me to the brink. The tenterfield, ever since he got bitten by a snake, is a mental case. I detest both of them.

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  7. We have a cattle dog- Never growls and barks sparingly- usually for the right reasons. Great watch dog. Sadly we also have 2 terriers.. a fox and a tenterfield. The fox terrier is 17 years old and has one monotone bark which she seems to enjoy unleashing when she is standing against a wall. It is a bark that drives me to the brink. The tenterfield, ever since he got bitten by a snake, is a mental case. I detest both of them.

    ReplyDelete