Thursday, April 29, 2010

There's a scary noise in the backyard and it makes us not want to bark

Me and Scout have been being bad dogs lately. We bark. A lot.

We bark at the mailman and we bark at the man across the street who plays ball with his dog in the street in front of our house. We bark at the neighborhood kids (and they bark back at us, which just makes us bark more!). We bark at Kona and Killian, and they bark at us. I bark at the cranky chickens to tell them to Be nice, you dumb chickens!

And sometimes I just walk around barking because I'm so happy.

Me and Scout think we're doing a good thing. We're saying hello and being friendly!

Except Mommy says No more barking!! You're making everyone crazy!!

Sometimes we get blamed for barking when we're not even barking. Sometimes there are lot of barks happening outside and we're inside all snug in bed with Mommy and people say We heard your dogs barking this morning. Sorry silly, that wasn't us!

But sometimes we are barking machines!

We tried to stop barking but it's not easy for a dog to stop doing dog stuff.

Then yesterday something happened when I started barking at the chickens and Scout barked at me. A big noise is what happened. It scared Scout a lot. He stopped barking and ran right into the house.

I stopped barking to hear where it came from but it had already stopped. So I barked again. And the noise happened again, but when I stopped barking the noise stopped.

Uh oh. Something spooky is going on because Mommy said Silly puppy, I don't hear any noise!

Kona and Killian came out into their yard to bark and but me and Scout decided that we're not going to bark back at them because of the scary noise.

I think the scary noise might also scare the birds, because Mommy got a new birdhouse but we haven't seen any birds go into it at all.*

So me and Scout decided we're going to pretend we stopped barking because Mommy asked us to, but really we're not going to bark because of the scary noise. I'll let you know what makes the noise once we find out!

Love,
Bandit


(*Don't tell Bandit, but the scary noise is coming from the birdhouse! It's a bark deterrent that emits an ultrasonic noise when the dogs bark. - Mommy)


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2 comments:

nancy said...

Dear Bandit,

My grandmother's last name is Killian. Maybe I'm related to your neighbor! Also, could you ask your Mommy where she got that birdhouse? I think we might need one in our backyard.

love,
nancy

Joanne Brokaw said...

Hi Nancy! Mommy here. :)
They have the Guardian brand at WalMart for $49.
I got the PetSafe brand birdhouse at PetSmart. It was $54 on sale, and I had a $5 gift card so since I was already there I got that one, and I can bring it back w/o any problems. The girl at PetSmart said it doesn't work for most dogs because they learn live with the noise and keep barking. She said to try it and if it didn't work, bring it back.

Scout is VERY noise sensitive, though, so it only took one time for that thing to go off for him to decide he wasn't going to risk it again.

Bandit seems to have made the connection. I turned it off to see what he'd do and he barked and then looked for the noise, LOL. And he hasn't barked once at the chickens, which is really good, LOL.

The good thing is that it has a 50 ft range, so our neighbor's dogs also heard it. ;)

So give it a shot. If the store you buy it from has a good return policy, you can take it back if it doesn't work.

http://www.google.com/search?source=ig&hl=en&rlz=&=&q=petsafe+outdoor+bark+control&aq=0&aqi=g10&aql=&oq=petsafe+o&gs_rfai=

Mommy (aka Joanne!)