The Barking Alarm Clock

As I’ve mentioned in other posts, we have 3 dogs, and all 3 are recues.  All 3 of them sleep in our master bedroom/bath area with our door shut so that they don’t terrorize the ferrets or wake the kids up.  The smallest dog (J.J.) is a border collie with an intense herding instinct.  She was previously a stray, and we believe she is about 4 or 5 years old.  J.J. has a loud, shrill bark, and she uses frequently because she is convinced that her role in life is to keep the other 2 dogs in line.

Piper, a 2 year old Border Collie/Aussie Sheppard mix, is the alpha dog of the group.  She decides when the other 2 dogs get to eat, play, or chase other dogs at the park.  She has a loud bark, and she uses it in a commanding way… except at 6am in the morning.  In the early morning, she stares out the second floor bedroom window and feels compelled to bark at people that are walking dogs that she can see down on the sidewalk.  This of course requires J.J. to bark even louder because she is certain she should be barking since Piper is barking.

Finally, Lukas is the lone male of the group.  He is an 18 month old lethal white Aussie/border collie mix, and he is deaf.  [Learn more about lethal whites Aussies on the Amazing Aussies website.]  Even though he cannot hear himself bark, he will also bark at people through the bedroom window.  Stopping Lukas from barking requires that we get his attention to give him a hand signal.  This means we have to get out of bed to wag a finger in a “No No No” fashion in front of his face.  Nonetheless, we’ve had more success in getting him to stop barking than we have had with Piper, because… well… Piper thinks she is alpha dog over us sometimes too.

So that brings us to morning… Sometime between 5:00am and 6:30am, as the number of people walking dogs outside increases, our dogs feel more compelled to bark.  We do our best to quiet them and tell them “No!” to get a few more minutes of sleep, which is like sleeping between a 3 minute snooze setting.  Depending on how tired we are, at some point we give up with all 3 dogs barking at top volume and running around the bedroom to let us know that people are walking dogs outside.  By “around the bedroom” I mean that they run over us on the bed as if we were just another obstacle to navigate to get around the room. At this point, Karen and I will have a brief, half-awake conversation to decide if I am taking the dogs hiking or if she is taking them to the dog park after I leave for work.  Either way, I get up to start my day… hike or go into work earlier.

What about all you out there in disturbia?  Do you start your day with a barking alarm clock?  Are you one of those 5:30am walkers at which our dogs are barking out the window?

This entry was posted on Monday, August 18, 2008 at 11:21 am and is filed under Pets, Suburbia. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response or trackback from your own site.

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