Bounty, the Dog Hunter

I have a barking dog problem in my neighborhood and I’m embarking on what I think will be a long, painful, and probably fruit-less endeavor, but I will at least feel better for having tried something, and I’m gonna drag you along.

I’m not really sure when it started.  It’s one of those things that really creeps up on you, and by the time you get motivated to do something about it, you’re homicidal, or dogicidal, as the case may be.

I would guess that it probably started about 3 weeks ago.  A dog starts barking at about 5 in the morning and maybe it’s one of those mornings when I have to be up around 5 anyhow, so I don’t think much of it and go on with my life.  Maybe a couple more mornings happen that way that week and I still don’t really notice.  The following week, it probably happens again, but this week I don’t have to be up until 6, so I wake up to the barking dog, look at the clock, rejoice in the fact that I’ve got another hour to sleep, and go back to bed.  I probably have about a week of that until I come upon a day when I don’t have to get up at the crack of dawn and I notice that dog barking from about 5 am until about 8am.  Man, that’s out of control!

So, probably a couple more of the 5am or 6am days go by and then another day comes that I don’t have to be up until 8 and this time the dogs get me up at 5 and now that I notice them, I notice that the barking simply doesn’t stop.  Yap yap yap yap yap.  Yap yap yap yap yap.  Yap yap yap yap yap.  Wow, that dog can go on a long time.  I wonder how long.  Turns out, it’s hours.  That’s amazing.  Well, maybe it will stop.

So, it happens a couple more times and I try to cope with it by being empathetic with the dog.  I wonder what that poor dog is thinking about that is making him bark and bark and bark.  Poor thing.  Yeah.  Poor thing.  Well, that works for a couple of days and then my empathy pretty much expires.

So, it’s about 3, or maybe 4 weeks of this, and I have had it.  I’m gonna go find that dog, and it’s owner, and put an end to both of them.  Well, that’s insane.  I love dogs, so I’m certainly not gonna hurt a dog, and the dog and owner are probably located in Guadalupe, a predominantly Mexican community that I have been warned, repeatedly, to stay out of at night.  So, I do nothing, and you know how satisfying that is.

Well, one morning my husband wakes up, cussing up a storm, and now I know that dog has to quit.  The barking, I can somewhat tolerate, but my cussing husband, my sleep-deprived husband, my waking-up-in-a-foul-mood husband, is going to require some solution to this problem.

Enter, “Bounty, the Dog Hunter.”