Stand back everyone I’m going on a rant. Run, don’t look back, save yourself, I have passed irritated and have reached flat out cranky. I am working on three days of sleep deprivation and am pretty sure there will be a fourth and a fifth and so on. The reason for this new state, the weather has finally cooled off enough to allow us to open the windows and turn off the air conditioning. Refreshing you would think, but no, our neighbor has a Chocolate Lab puppy that is about nine or ten months old, a sweet loving and totally out of control monstrously large puppy. The neighbor’s will put the puppy out on a run I think just to get some away time from him. And what do puppies do when they are bored and have no one exercising, training and loving on them, puppies find ways to entertain themselves. They chew on inappropriate things like the deck, and furniture, dig up the yard and most of all, bark. Lucky us, the puppy is tied up outside our bedroom window.

The first night the puppy barked for an hour. He would bark nonstop for about five minutes, then stop for about five minutes lulling me into the false sense of relaxation, thinking that the neighbor had enough of him yapping and took him in. No such luck, he was just resting his vocal cords. This on and off barking continued on and on so that when the neighbor finally did take him in for the night, we were both so keyed up, neither one of us had any restful sleep. Getting up at two thirty in the morning for our work schedule makes for a short night anyway, but add only maybe a couple of hours of sleep and we have the start of short tempers. The second night we went to bed earlier because of the prior night’s lack of sleep and hoped for the best. The puppy started off again and barked his on and off routine for about forty-five minutes making another night of misery for us. Last night, he barked for an hour and a half. Mitch finally broke down and called the neighbor and left a message.

That was the whine, here comes the rant. I love dogs, but a barking dog grates on my soul. I cannot stand listening to a dog barking nonstop. If the dog starts barking go and check on the dog and find out why he’s barking. If it’s an intruder, shoot him and let the dog eat the intruder, the dog won’t be barking while he is eating. If nothing is wrong and the dog is just bored, get up off of your duff and go play with him. Run him around the yard throwing a ball, put him through some training drills or walk him. Anything to exercise his body and brain, but don’t leave the dog outside on a run to make the rest of the neighbors miserable.

I would be mortified if a neighbor called me to complain that my dogs were causing any inconvenience for them. I just don’t understand people anymore. What has happened to manners and thoughtfulness? The saddest part about the whole mess is that the puppy will probably be the one to suffer the most from our sleep deprivation. He will probably be kenneled more and for longer periods causing more out of control behavior or worse turned over to a shelter because the owners don’t want to deal with the problem.

Okay so much for my rant, I’m still tired and cranky, but I feel a little better getting that off my chest. Mitch and the dogs thank you too for letting me vent. Cross your fingers for us that maybe just maybe we might get a decent night’s sleep soon. That or pray for cold weather so we have to close the windows and turn on the furnace.