Sandy's Say: Barking Mad
…After several litters in quick succession the emaciated female Labrador resembled a drooping sack of pebbles. She began to lose the plot and she would rasp out her deep throated bark for hours on end, sometimes dueted by the male dog’s mournful howl. This would go on day and night..
Sandy James tells of being driven to the brink of insanity by noisy four-legged neighbours.
For years I thought that the dogs next door were called Shaddup and Boofhead because that was all that I ever heard their owners yell at them. They were two large Labradors who never left their tiny, backyard prison and essentially their purpose was to breed puppies. These litters were sold off at regular intervals to cover the cost of school fees. The cost to the rest of the neighbourhood was a loss of peace and quiet which took us all to the brink of insanity.
After several litters in quick succession the emaciated female Labrador resembled a drooping sack of pebbles. She began to lose the plot and she would rasp out her deep throated bark for hours on end, sometimes dueted by the male dog’s mournful howl. This would go on day and night, whenever the owners were at work or out socialising.
Our neighbour on the other side was a very sick man who was dying an agonisingly slow death from cancer. For months he lay on his bed sweating, tossing, turning and being driven crazy by the incessant noise. His wife went to plead his case with the dog owners but she was simply rebuffed. She was told that she was being unreasonable. THEY never heard their dogs bark when they were home so she must be exaggerating the situation.
Matters came to a head when the family went away on a three week holiday and left the poor creatures alone in the garden. They drank their water from the swimming pool and Grandpa would come once a day and put food down for them. Now they were barking under our bedroom window all through the night and we were so punished by the lack of sleep that we walked around in a gelatinous fog of drunken exhaustion. It was an extreme form of wretched punishment, not unlike the sound torture of a constantly dripping tap.
By the time that the dog owners returned, I had transformed from a generally good natured, compatible person into a desperate zombie. I went next door to discuss the issue with the dog owners. She was a fierce school mistress and it took great courage to stand one’s ground in front of her at the best of times. I was flabbergasted when she told me that the dogs were not the problem – I was. Why, if the noise was so bad had no-one else, other than the dying man’s wife, complained? I must confess that’s when I lost the plot.
“For crying out loud, Liz,” I spat out, “these few houses are surrounded on three sides by a cemetery. No-one else has complained because everyone else is DEAD!”
Eventually we were driven into selling up and moving away. I went past there yesterday and our old place is now derelict. The new owners are rumoured to be drug dealers and the weeds are so prolific and tall that you can hardly see the house. All of this on Sydney’s leafy North Shore which is considered a nice, suburban place to raise a family. I am told that the present owners of our old house have two dogs, a Great Dane which barks constantly with a deep resonating woof and a little Maltese Terrier which yaps in piercing, high pitched unison.
Now if that isn’t karmic retribution then I don’t know what is.
