We never had a dog. When the boys were growing up, we really lived rather hand-to-mouth, and when the boys wanted pets, I said that they really couldn’t have pets that had to go to the vet and get vaccinations, etc, because we had to use the money we had to take them to the pediatrician to get vaccinations and shots and medicine, and we just didn’t have any extra money for pets. We did compromise with smaller, easier pets. Jeremy got a white rabbit one year for Christmas. He named her “Mary” and she lived a nice, quiet life for several years. When Kevin wanted a pet, we got a gerbil, whose name was “Dasher,” who also lived a nice life in Kevin’s bedroom, in a hamster habitat.

My sister says that our Mother was afraid of dogs, and that’s why we never had one as a pet. And so I never really developed the hankering for a dog.

I’ve played with other people’s dogs, and avoided other people’s dogs, and, at this point, I’m not at all interested in having a dog. I am, however consistently annoyed by other dogs. There’s a dog to the right of me. He’s a small, yippy, sort of dog, but he spends most of his time inside. Sometimes he comes outside and sees me and barks, but not for long. One evening, my neighbor was setting out to walk him, and I asked to come along. I enjoyed it, but I think I walked too slowly, and both my neighbor and the dog seemed to wish that I would move a little more quickly.

Then, there are the other dogs who live on the other side of me, which whom I do not have a good relationship. At all.

The neighbors who live there, and who have lived there for quite a while, have suddenly gotten dogs. A brown one and a white one. And those dogs do not like me. Not one tiny bit. They are sleek, good-sized dogs, and they find me unacceptable. Very unacceptable. It’s possible that they feel that way about most folks, but most folks do not live next door to them and come outside. Not into their yard. Just outside. To any outside area that’s within their ability to sense movement, or possibly, some sort of aura or aroma. Or, maybe, some offensive sound, such as the opening of a door, which, horrors of horrors, might lead to someone actually coming outside!!!

Grrrrr. WOOF!! WOOF!!! WOOF!!!

I don’t go outside very much. I’ve finished most of the yard work I’ve been doing, now that the weather’s gotten warmer. But I do have to go outside every few days. I have a container that I put food scraps in, and that fills up after a while. And, I need to take those scraps to the compost bin. That trip entails my opening the back door, stepping out onto our small porch, walking down the two steps, walking across the patio, and then walking to the back corner of the yard, where the compost bins are. And where the back corner of our yard meets the back corner of the yard where the dogs are. The instant I step out of the house, the dogs race over to their side of the fence (which is a wooden fence) and they’ve already started barking. Well, not exactly. They’ve started BARKING! BARKING! BARKING! In dog language, I’m supposing it’s something along the lines of, “Who IS that?!?!? What’s she DOING over there!!?!?!?!? Why isn’t she going back into her OWN house?!?!?!!? How long is she going to stay OUT here?!?!?!? Can’t she understand that WE DON’T LIKE HER!!! When is she going back into HER OWN HOUSE?!?!? WE DON’T LIKE YOU! WE DON’T LIKE YOU! WE DON’T LIKE YOU!!!!!!

I have gotten the message. But I do really need to take the food scraps out to the compost. And I am not going to move the compost bins up to the porch.

JoAnne had an interesting idea. Since I am a senior adult woman and have to go to the bathroom several times during the night, she suggested that after every trip to the bathroom, I should step out onto that back porch. Not walk across the yard, just step onto the porch, and then the dogs would go berserk every couple of hours or so, and help the owners see that the neighbors are irritated by the dogs.

And, seriously, even though I didn’t try it, the dogs began to be rowdier and rowdier.

A couple of days later, as I went out on my own back patio, to water the plants, I heard one of the dogs whining and whining. Not barking, but whining. And, not ever having had a dog, I didn’t really know if there was a problem of some kind. So, I walked next door, listening, all the time, to the whining dog. There seemed to be only one dog. The white one. As I walked around the corner of their house, I saw that there wasn’t a car in the driveway (which there usually is, but, it might have been in the garage, and I didn’t know if they were home.) I rang the doorbell. I waited for a couple of minutes. The teen-aged daughter opened the door, and I said, “Can you help your dog? He seems distressed.”

And from several feet behind her, the mom said, “Oh, we’re eating dinner now. She was bothering us. We’ll get her when we’re done eating.” And I said, “Okay, I just didn’t know what was the matter, and I don’t usually hear the dogs whining. Sorry to bother you.” And I went back to my house.

Before I could get back into my house, the dog was back in their house. And now, and I am not making this up, both the dogs are now gone. The family seems to be there, but there aren’t any dogs.

I walk out of my back door to silence. I take my food scraps to the compost to silence. I sit on my bench on the patio and read. In silence. Well, there are birds. But they are not obnoxious.