Its 5:30 and there’s a dog barking in the neighbors yard. It’s been barking, off and on, since about 4 a.m. If this were an Native American village on the high plains, I think we’d all be up to see who was trying to steal our horses. Unless dogs on the high plains barked at skunks, raccoons, squirrels, and random cats as this one seems to be doing and that’s something I never thought about until just now. Were those dogs better trained? Seems unlikely.

At this point, I’m unhappy with the neighbor. Is there no way to shut that dog up? How do you sleep through that? I couldn’t and the dog is just over the fence. It reminds me of a weekend I spent long ago in a barracks room at a Naval hospital next to a room where the occupant was gone, but his radio still played. Day and night for two days. I would have confessed to a crime to get that music to stop. I could see someone committing one to get this dog to stop.

Anyway, I don’t blame the dog. It’s just doing dog things. It’s the neighbor. Inconsiderate, if you ask me. Of course, there’s always the possibility the neighbor is not home. Maybe the neighbor works nights. Which means the dog’s alone to do his dog thing. And where does that leave us? Victims of circumstance. But I suppose that’s the tradeoff for the convenience of living in a neighborhood, in civilization, barking dogs, honking horns, and the chatter of children. The sounds of life. And now the dog has stopped, and so begins the day.