worse than his bite

I can imagine why man would domesticate dogs. I imagine that, eons ago, man was a cold, hungry, frightened and lonely type of animal. His major concerns were, undoubtedly, staying warm, finding food, and sleeping in safety. I can imagine him watching the other animals to learn any of their tricks that would be useful to him. I bet he even thought, hey, if we could work together, we could get a lot more done than I can do alone, with my lack of fur and fangs and claws.

So, I can clearly see why, upon finding an untended den of helpless wolf cubs, some enterprising Early Man scooped one up and took it home and began the ages-long process of loving and breeding it into a domestic animal. A pet. Now the nights wouldn’t be quite so cold, hunting would be easier, other animals would keep their distance, and man had himself a friend. All this I can imagine and understand. In those days, a dog was truly an asset to the life of man.

But what I cannot imagine, what I spent ALL the wee hours of this morning trying to understand, is why on earth my next-door neighbors needed to obtain a full-grown, apparently full-blooded German Shepherd and chain him to a tree in their backyard. They aren’t using him for his furry body heat. They aren’t using him to hunt, since their hunting is done at the grocery store. Intruders onto their property would soon realize that any intruding they’d like to do is fine as long as they don’t go within the bare dirt circle the dog has worn around his anchoring tree.

All of this, of course, would be none of my business whatsoever, but for two things. First, about once every couple of weeks, the dog breaks loose, wiggles through a little hole in the fence between our properties and comes after my chickens. Not that he’s ever killed or eaten any of them.

This dog’s back is as high as my waist. But he comes bounding into our yard, rips a hole in the chicken coop, and then the poor, stupid, overbred animal stands there with his tongue lolling out because he doesn’t know what to do next. Over the ages, as some kind of cruel joke, we’ve bred out, at least of this dog, the knowledge of what to do with live food. I appreciate the restraint, to be sure, although I do resent having to fix the coop so often, but I shake my head in wonder at the pathos of the entire situation.

And the other point. Last night, for the first time this year, it was hot enough in our bedroom to want to open the window. Which, after kicking the blankets off and tossing for a while first, I did. I stood for a moment near the open window, feeling the cool breeze, listening to the spring frogs and the birds that were (inexplicably) singing at midnight, and went back to my bed.

And then the dog started to bark. Approximately, I would say, every three minutes or so from then until just before dawn, when it apparently got tired and went off to sleep. Of course, you’re wondering now why I didn’t just shut the window. But three minutes is juuust enough for you to slip away into sleep, to think that whatever the dog was barking at is surely gone now, to hear the chirping frogs, then to hear black nothing…and then the dog would bark again. And the bitter, bitter irony of this whole situation is, that they didn’t get a small dog, the kind that I imagine could fill people’s modern-day needs for dogs, whatever they may be, stress relief or companionship, perhaps. A beagle, or a basset hound would fit the bill nicely. No, they went out and got something large. Something LOUD.

And so I sit here this afternoon, watching the hours till bedtime, hazy in the head from lack of decent sleep, and in my mind is an endless loop of wondering, about Early Man, and wolves, and worthless, loud animals chained to backyard trees...

Maybe tonight I’ll turn on the fan.