Barking by Peter S. Jacobs

“Fred, your dog’s been barking incessantly. I’m getting fed up with the continuous noise; day and night, yap, yap, yap, yap.”

“It’s not more than usual, Bob. He only barks for a good reason.”

“It is a lot more than usual, and it’s a lot louder”.

“Rubbish, you must have switched your hearing aids on for a change”.

“I’ve always got my hearing aids on. It’s your dog that’s the problem”.

“It’s not my dog that’s the problem. Bonzo guards the district day and night. You should be grateful. You can never tell what is happening. There are always strangers about. Anyone could burgle or attack us.”.

“What do you mean? I should be grateful. He always disturbs the birds in my avery. Every time they hear his howling they fly all around the cages squawking, and their feathers go everywhere. It makes a real mess”.

“Bonzo probably doesn’t like the smell and constant chirping. He just yelps in retaliation”.

“He barks at anything and everyone continuously. It gets on my nerves and it is about time I got some peace and quiet from it”.

“There is no problem with my dog. In fact, he is very intelligent. Do you know, he can bark in time to the song, How Much Is That Doggy In The Window?”

“Is that the dreadful noise that I hear most evenings? I thought it was the cats mating over the back fence.”

“That’s not as bad as your parrot. Every time I walk up the side path by the fence, it tells me to Push Off.”

“Don’t worry; he’ll get the pronunciation right with more practice.”

“Your parrot couldn’t get anything right. He has got no intelligence and only mimics sounds. Not like my Bonzo”.

“There it is; your dog is off again. Can you hear how loud it is?”

“That isn’t my dog. It can’t be Bonzo. My wife has taken him for a walk.”

“It sounds just like him, going on and on and on.”

“The barking is coming from the avery… It’s your parrot.”

“Well, if your dog hadn’t barked so much, my parrot wouldn’t have learned to mimic him, would he?”