Sunday, March 3, 2013

Bark All Night, Sleep All Day

I, like most people, enjoy sleeping around 8 hours a night. I normally wake up around 5:30 in the morning on work days, while sleeping in until closer to 7 on weekends.  In recent days, however, I have gotten an early wake-up from our neighbor's dogs.

There are two of them, and they never bark, except when they are awake.  Then they bark non-stop.  That's not really fair.  Each of them stops barking, often for intervals as long as 3 seconds (I counted - not as effective as counting sheep it turns out).  I'm pretty sure they take turns making staccato status updates to the neighborhood, so neither of them gets tired.

I don't know what time they start, but generally I wake up around 2 - 3 in the morning to the sounds of their yapping.  At a rate of around 100 barks per minute, I have found I can handle about 800 barks before I literally can't take it any more and just get out of bed.  Fortunately they wrap up their session around 8 in the morning, so at least they only bark when human beings are trying to sleep.  Apparently after barking at the wind all night they are exhausted and crash for the day.

I don't know if their owners have sound proofed their house, are heavy sleepers or are working the graveyard shift.  I've never been so tempted to buy a big juicy steak and lace it with cyanide.  Not sure where I would get that, nor how I would get my neighbors to eat it.  I guess I'll just have to create some ambient noise to cover the sound of the hounds, by turning on a fan or perhaps letting the vacuum run next to the bed all night. I always took for granted that I would be able to sleep through the night until I got old enough for my prostrate to grow to the size of a small melon, forcing multiple trips to the bathroom.  Now I'm really looking forward to moving in a couple of years.