Paddy Whack, Give the Dog a Bone

The Neighbors next door are away.  You can tell by the tone in their dog's bark, lonely, distressed and badly stuck in the bark-until-dawn mode. Thursday night, she gave up in exhaustion after a couple of hours.  But last night was a warm night.  For blocks around folks had their windows open.  Dynasty (the old dog's name) was securely stuck in "bark."

I can often sleep through this sort of thing.  One ear doesn't hear very much, so I tuck the other one into the pillow and pay the noise no mind.  But a lonely heart taints the voice, and I could her plaintive and perpetual expressions even through the pillow. Irritation energy from all the sleepless neighbors was also sparking around with each continuing doggy exclamation.

Looks like 1:30 AM is the time to start the Things I get to do today with settling Dynasty so we all could get back to sleep.   Two cups of ancient dog food (rancid for years, I imagine), slippers, a bathrobe and a flashlight in hand, I pad over to the neighbor's house, around one side to the fence and heave the kibbles over and up onto their deck where the dog takes her station of lonely and forgotten watch and alarm.  She remained bark-stuck for another minute or so until her nose brought in a more important message: food.

The sun rose on a quiet neighborhood this morning.  You could hear the birds singing.  Unfortunately, Dynasty heard another dog in the area and began her incessant tale of woe all over again.  This time I did what I had to do--found the second-hand bone in my back yard that still have a couple of good chews on it and plenty of good sniffing (we had been dog-sitting our daughter's pooch last week, and he didn't take it with him, having gnawed all the best stuff off already), hiked over to the neighbor and thrust the bone up onto the deck.  Instant silence.  Some 8 hours later it is still quiet.