May 16, 2013
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The Morning Concert
Annie is in the dining room sneak-boofing at something in the window. She can’t bark because the gray machine slams her eardrums, so she boofs. Sometimes she growls. What she does not do is bark hysterically over and over again until she works herself into such a fit that she’s wired and growly all day.
I have, however, learned something else about the gray anti-bark machine: it is completely ineffective on Riley, who is a mere 10 pounds heavier. He weighs 52 pounds, so he is not a large dog by most standards. Apparently the larger the dog, the less effective the machine is. I learned this from our trainer last night. I am trying to process this information, but I am failing. What possible relationship is there between size and sound? This processing is complicated by the fact that when Annie barks loudly in the Conservatory, I get a blast to one ear. It’s…uncomfortable. Startling, I think is the most accurate assessment. Once I thought I heard a sound, but for the most part she barks and this blast of pressure hits my right ear. One could make a case for hysterical hearing, I suppose. The sound is supposed to be too high for human ears to hear, and I don’t have any reason to believe my hearing is any more acute or has a higher range than anyone else’s. (Well: Nancy’s or Ilah’s, certainly.) And I have only experienced this phenomenon in my chair in the Conservatory, which is some distance (probably not 25 feet) from the machine. It doesn’t happen all of the time. I suppose it’s possible that it’s a delayed response to Annie’s bark itself, except I never experienced it before the machine came… Anyway. My point is, I weigh considerably more that 52 pounds and it affects me. It has NO EFFECT WHATSOEVER on Riley. If he ran into the dining room to bark the mailman away he barks. And barks, and barks. Get thee to your little red, white and blue truck and drive away, you infidel The machine was firing red bolts of light at him all of the time.
On the other hand, Riley doesn’t bark all that much. He hardly ever barked at all before Annie came. We are hoping he will adjust back to his pre-Annie level of barking and all will be well.
Annie is the star of her class. (I still can’t process that.) She is very smart and she adores our trainer and she picks up commands almost immediately. We are working on one that doesn’t really give her that little jolt of happiness previous commands have supplied–we’re working on ‘wait’, which runs contrary to Annie’s basic nature–but she picked it up quickly when Holly worked with her. We have three dogs in our class, Blue, who is a big bubba of a pit bull, happy, happy dog, still struggling with puppymind, and a black lab-mix puppy named Diesel. Diesel is a beautiful dog, but he has anxiety issues. And then there’s our little black rhino-butt, Annie. Hi hi hi, let’s go, let’s do this!
And this is the thing. Annie is less reactive around other dogs. We were walking through PetSmart last night to get to our class and this young couple was walking their half-grown cat on a leash. (Really.) Annie saw it first: her tail started wagging furiously, Come on, come, let’s go meet this cat But for all intents and purposes, Annie likes cats. I averted the meeting, not having any idea how the cat felt about meeting a dog. We watched a min pin get loose in the store, but we just watched. And Blue took off at a dead run to greet Annie and she just…greeted him. He’s been in several of her classes and she’s greeted him before, so I didn’t panic (I didn’t have time) but it went very smoothly. We generally avoid other dogs in PetSmart, but she has definitely calmed down.
And she has no obvious holes in her body, which mean she has finally mastered playing with Riley. (Or to rephrase that, she has finally learned when to quit playing with Riley: that when he says, ‘stop, I’m tired of this’, it’s actually time to stop. There are very few dog commands I intuitively understand, but being an older sister, I recognized that one right away.)
We are actually going to go for the Good Citizenship Certificate. With Annie.
Right now, however, the hysterical barking kick dog down the street is regaling us with some sort of concert of dissatisfaction. We are trying, trying to be good, but it is SO HARD to be calm when right down the street one of our kind has completely lost it!
Now someone else has joined the chorus. Some hound, perhaps.
Boof.
