Tag Archives: Barking dogs

Witta Dog Pound

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WITTA DOG POUND

Ah, did you think that Witta, that beautiful area on the hill in Queensland, was a residential suburb? Well, folks do, when they first move here, but no, it’s a dog pound.

True, there are some folk here, amongst the canids, but in reality Witta is a canine community: humans are the minority. For every dog-free lot there is one with three. Three dogs, that is. Dogs rule in Witta.

Needless to say, the human population is not devoted to the neighbourhood dogs, and neither is the dog-owning sector, for these dogs are loose, lonely, bored, frustrated and frequently neglected and deserted by their owners.

Not a day or night goes by without some dogs deserted. The owners off, away, relaxing, shopping, restauranting, spending the night with in-laws or friends, or even a week-end at the coast. Without their dogs.

Restaurants discourage dogs. As do shops, beaches, in-laws, friends, hotels, units.

The reason dogs are discouraged, banned even, is because of their teeth, their shit, and their incessant barking.

So the dogs are left at home, to shit, yes, but mainly to bark, and bark, and bark, and bark, incessantly, from the instant their owners drive away until the moment of return: which may be even days later.

So who cares for these deserted dogs? NO ONE.

Who is affected by these deserted dogs? EVERY NEIGHBOUR.

Do the owners know of the cacophony they leave behind? NO. Because they drive away in sound-proof, air-conditioned comfort, oblivious to the ceaseless, unmitigated racket which starts the moment they leave. And stops the moment they return.

We dogless households fume and plot, our rest and sleep destroyed, hour after hour. Awake, wishing, hoping for the owners to return: surely, soon, surely by midnight, surely they are not staying the night in some peaceful motel?

Why are we loath to tackle the problem? To follow the Council Guidelines For Nuisance and Barking Dogs? Because we’re all a lot of wusses, that’s why. Fearful of knocking on a door and complaining. Set in our conservative ways, making no waves, terrified of awakening the ire of a mass-murdering dog-owner. Well, shame on us. Get out there and complain, otherwise the sleepless nights and destroyed days will continue.

But one quiet night, and we’ve forgotten the anger and frustration, and smile like babies through our peaceful dreams. Until. At three a.m. a dog-owner sets off to his (or her) early shift, leaving the three dogs to clamour for the return of their feeder and petter. Loud, long, and concerted barking for ten hours. Damn, damn, damn.

Every neighbour agrees; but will anyone act? Will they buggery. But soon, the worm will turn. Imagine: a beautiful suburb, birdsong, merry gardening and peaceful nights un-tainted by the chorus of yap-yap, yap yap yap, yap-bark bark, bark yap yap yap yap yap yap………………………………………………………………………

WITTA DOGS chapter three

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WITTA DOGS and suburban dogs in general

Today, and my moaning is monotonous, I know; the Howler did the morning shift, howling loud and long from dawn to noon, shredding the peaceful hours between ride-on roaring.

When its owner came home to an apparently silent dog, another neighbour with two yappers left for destinations unknown. The Yappers, as usual, considered that their lives were from that minute utterly desperate, informed the neighbourhood loud, long, and incessant, stimulating a few distant mates to sing the chorus.

Enough of the silent, inward moans from me.

One day, one of the houses nearby will be sold, as happens quickly in this popular spot. Sold to someone who doesn’t give a damn about neighbourly feeling, and sets about silencing the community dog-pound. With vigour and determination.

First, she will record the cacophony. Quality sound, time, duration, date, and address all meticulously formatted. The echoing early hours will be a symphonic storm of dog-yells. She will do this for a few weeks, and select the most irritating for archives.

On a bad night, she will contact the police, the local pound, and the RSPCA, leaving urgent messages, because none of those services operate after sundown, and the reason burglaries occur then.

She will repeat the calls next day, with follow-up messages by mail, email, and the multitude of electronic media now available.

She won’t give a damn about the neighbourhood, but will force signatures to a most specific document of complaint, cleverly worded, with emphasis on nuisance, noise-pollution, insomnia etc.. I’d sign it. She is also strangely attractive, and a very good talker.

Enough signatures and recordings (four rabid neglected dogs in constant chorus, 7pm to dawn: 9 hours of cacophony……..and that’s just one example from her library) will insure that the offending dogs will be silenced, humanely. Remaining alive, but voiceless, and at the owners’ expense.

Now bear in mind that right now, and for the five previous hours, as I type, two nearby Yappers plus occasional friends have been in constant row. And are yet. Not more than three seconds silence at any time for that period. And daylight is fading. It could go on all night, and has many, many times.

The sound is somehow magnified as darkness falls. The later, the louder. Pre-dawn the worst.

The woman instigating the silencing will have everyone’s support. All us weak-willed, lily-livered, afraid-to-offend wusses will serve our bold leader to achieve what we should have done years ago.

Even the owners of the most aggravating dogs will sign, ha ha, because THEY DON’T KNOW!           And right now………….

                                             …………. I await their return, and a peaceful night.

P.S. Darkness. Even the birdsong ceased. Echoing double-yapyapyapping ricochets, rending the still air.

WITTA DOGS chapter two.

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NOT JUST WITTA DOGS.

MOST OF THE ONE-ACRE BLOCKS ON THE HILL ARE DOG-POUNDS.

You must think I’m a boring old fart with nothing better to do than to listen to dogs all night and day. And you’d be right. Along with all farmers, the forced inaction due to the drought leads to boredom, wife-beating, the pub, terror regarding the future, bankruptcy and blogging.

My avos are dying by the day; there’s nothing I can do, no water I dare use to effect a little dampness to the roots, and each dead tree represents years of nurture and cost. As for general plantation-maintainance, using a tractor is asking for trouble. One spark, just one.

Already many neighbours are burned-out; both land and hope, and my turn could happen any day: twenty years of work obliterated. If the house survives…….but I daren’t think about it. The fact that we’re all in the same boat is no consolation.

So, searching the BOM for any hope each day, as we’ve been conditioned to do, is fruitless and disillusioning; this is a rare and devastating drying-event with no obvious ending, and absolutely no solution.

It’s the inaction that focuses the mind on irrelevant irritations, especially in the quiet of the night, when all the deserted, neglected dogs for miles around are screaming with loneliness.

A new voice made itself heard over the past day: small and howling with utter sadness, hour after hour. We haven’t had a howler before. It seems to engender sympathy with its deserted state, rather than the intense irritation caused by the rabid yappers.

The yappers rule, unfortunately. There’s no sadness in their incessant row. They are just spoilt brats with indefatigable peace-rending. Little machines that no-one ever shuts down.

The big woofers are not so bad; they briefly speak in deep tones out of a sense of duty, then leave off. And here’s the point of the whole problem. It seems that all these canines are kept as some sort of miss-guided home-invasion protection. A cheap warning alarm to keep the nasty ones away. Well, do I have news for you.

A big woofer is a deterrent. A yapper or three is an invitation: there’s no-one home. Yappers advertise to the whole street that the house is available for ransacking. Empty a few cans of boiled cow over the fence and in you go. Take your time, the dogs will let you know when it’s time to scarper.

At night, with the owners tucked-up and the yappers snoring in or under the bed, the invaders gain silent access undetected, until it’s too late. Yappers have little or no awareness by ear or nose; just constant hunger for canned mush. Once asleep only a poke with a sharp stick will rouse indignation..

So all that row, night after night, year after year, serves only to irritate the neighbours. The moral; if you really feel the need for a watch-dog, then GET one. There IS such a thing. And it’s not a pack of tiny yappers. It’s a quiet, vigilant blue-heeler, or a small alsatian-cross, or something not in-bred and fluffy. I know, having suffered severely from a silent and effective guardian.

In youth, selling door-to-door in a desperate attempt to feed starving babies, I became used to household dogs and their danger-level. Ninety-nine percent softies. The occasional one avoided was a danger not only to me but to anyone, including the owner. An eater of small children. But usually that dog displayed its viciousness with snarling dentition and insane focus. We had one in our street in Nundah which used to terrify the kids coming home from school, and anyone passing the gate unaware. I took to carrying a squeezy bottle of dilute juice from those little explosive peppers. Ha! Problem solved. As it lunged savagely at the Cyclone gate it copped a squirt right in the tonsils. Immediate silence. Immediate backing off. I only had to do it once. It remembered me for ever, and I could pass in peace and safety. God help any child that opened the gate to deliver a message.

Now, back to the door-to-door. I always knew I wasn’t welcome, but what’s a starving boy to do? This house was in Gladstone, and on my ordered route, no shirking the rule. I had knocked on the front door; no answer, but the folks were busy inside, so I persevered. Try round the back. I was wearing the uniform of all car-salesmen and others of ill-repute. It was universal and considered stylish for a month or two during that era: white trousers and shoes.

I carried my heavy roll of sales-gear over one arm, my door-rapping knuckles at the ready, and started up the back steps, unaware of the danger. Half way up an agonising pain in my thigh. Utterly scream-worthy, and I did scream. Unbelievable immobilising torture of four big canine teeth which met and clamped through my leg. Scars there fifty years later.

The dog was most excellent; no noise, no warning, not even a growl, no shaking of its prey, it just held me, and its grip tightened if I flinched a millimetre. All I could do was yell, and holy shit did I yell.

A nice lady opened the back door, shocked at the sight of this poor young white-trousered, white-faced bloke with blood streaming down his daks, filling up the white shoe on the way down. The dog let go at a word, and I collapsed where I was. Never seen so much blood, and it was all mine. Dripping from tread to tread.

But, oh, if I had been a small child.

I wonder today why there was no thought of ambulance. Or police. Or charges laid. I limped back a mile to my car and drove in great pain to the motel for R&R. I frightened myself with the trouserless sight as I stripped off in the shower, but though there were four intersecting holes in my upper leg and massive bruising, the bleeding stopped quickly and I was able to limp to a surprised surgery for a tetanus-shot.

Now THAT was a watch dog, and no yapping.

WITTA DOGS

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WITTA DOGS………..IS IT JUST ME?

PERHAPS I’M JUST A MISERABLE OLD COMPLAINING SOD (don’t answer that). BUT.

Witta is a paradise, but this Garden of Eden is not polluted with talking snakes, neither am I in danger of being cast-out for scrumping apples.

There is, however, pollution of an unusual sort. Noise pollution; day and night. The night variety worse, in this otherwise peaceful rural landscape of beautiful jungley scrub and tree-shaded gardens.

Now, the chain-saw and ride-on mower cause temporary pain. They will eventually stop, and usually before dark. And I do contribute, so can’t complain.

Now, the native birds are rowdy, from dawn to dusk, and there’s the occasional illegal rooster, and cars do go past; then there’s the school bus, and the garbage truck on Wednesday mornings, and some folk will practice carpentry and piano with various skill, but there’s a much, much worse noise.

It will start when a neighbour goes out in the evening; drives to the film-night in Maleny, or to visit friends. Worse, visits friends and stays the night.

Worse still, neighbours that go away for the weekend, or for a few days.

LEAVING THEIR TWO OR THREE DOGS AT HOME ALONE, IN THE YARD.

We know the instant they drive off.

The whole neighbouhood knows the instant the leave.

On the worst of nights and days, many neighbours near and far will leave their homes and dogs for various canine-free activities, WHILST THEIR WRETCHED PETS HOWL AND SCREAM AND YELL from the very instant the car doors slam until the gravel crunches on their owners’ return. We hear this. We suffer for the duration. We get angry.

Imagine. The evening quiet. Even the currawongs give up. An occasional lapwing calls on its twilight homeward flight. A boobook hoots like a sad cuckoo. A car starts next door and simultaneously two dogs bark. Rabid, furious, outraged barking as the car leaves. The evening destroyed, the barking frantic, unstoppable, non-stop, no stopping, double barking on and on and on.

Barking dogs are indefatigable. They do not tire. The more dogs, the more clamorous. Only starvation, thirst and death will quiet a ‘left’ dog.

Owners, as a caste, do not know this fact. As their soundproof car-doors slam, they drift in cushioned silence on their journey to oblivion, oblivious. Unaware of the cacophony in their wake. Of stay-at-homes with ruined evenings and corrupted sleep, waiting, waiting, staring in the dark, hoping for the neighbours’ return, and the instant peace it will bring.

The dog-owner returns to a quiet dog. What, my dog barks? We don’t know our own dog? It never barks. Listen: do you hear it bark?

But we know, and we are angry. We forget, after a few nights of peace, and our anger dissipates. But often, night after night, daytime too, there are many absent owners, and the never-ending barking of a dozen dogs brings thoughts of selling-up. Now there are dog-owners who are aware: they are responsible, reasonable, and their dogs likewise. And there are many neighbours in agreement regarding the problem, but no-one is sufficiently driven to instigate an official complaint. Yet.

But nights of peace are so blissful here on our perfect hill, we sleep, and we forget.

Who let the dogs out?

Post script: Neighbours of friends in The Grange in Brisbane had two incessantly-barking miniature collies. The whole street complained, with the result that the dogs were de-barked by a vet, and peace reigned. Despite the dogs’ best efforts, little sound is now emitted.