Yap. Yap. Yap. Yapyap, yapyapyap. That's the sound from down the street.

Awhoof. Awhoof. Awhoofwhoofwhoof. That's the two on the corner. We hate those dogs.

And then we have mine: one who yaps when ever she gets scared, only she's big so it's like the biggest yap you ever heard, and she's always scared. And Doc, who thinks his job is to defend the back yard from cats, raccoons, and homeless people, and that he ought to do it as loudly as possible. Sigh.

Bitch about other people's dogs, or yours, and tell me what you did to shut yours up.

-- Anonymous, January 31, 2001

Answers

I have a greyhound/rat terrier mix (shut up -- she's cute), and my roommate has a beagle. Beagles sing and howl and cry all the livelong day. I think it's just what they do. My mutt is fond of barking at every moving object, be it a person walking down the street, a wandering cat (in which case my dog not only barks, but squeals a squealy sound akin to that perhaps produced when one is caught in, say, a steel trap), or a blade of grass.

At our old house, we got an anonymous postcard in the mail: "Neighbors, the incessant barking of your dogs is disturbing my peace of mind," blah blah blah. We neatly ignored it, because with a street of adjacent yards chock full of barking dogs, what can you do? Shutting ours up wouldn't have curbed the overall problem of one noisy motherfucking street. (Excuse me.)

We try to bring them in when they're being especially obnoxious, but thankfully, our new neighbors are all very, very old and evidently very, very deaf.

-- Anonymous, January 31, 2001

You should try having a basset mix. He has a deep, from-the-bottom- of-his-gut bark that just drones on and on. We usually are equipped with water guns which will quiet him but sometimes, the dog's just gotta bark and you have to accept it.

He also has the habit of running with the neighbor dog, up and down the fence. That would be fine (and self-exercising, too) if he didn't give two barks at each end of the fence. Run up the fence. Reeooff. Reeoooff. Run down the fence. Reeooollff. Ruuullff.

The water gun usually works.

-- Anonymous, January 31, 2001

Oh, god. I forgot about beagles. There are four beagles in our immediate neighborhood, but two of them don't bark at all and the other two are almost always indoors, so they aren't so bad. In our old neighborhood, though, there was a beagle who howled and bayed day and night. I was sure someone was going to poison the little monster (or his owners).

Our next door neighbor has a bull mastiff who never barks, but he does make this weird bellowing noise like a cow in labor. It cracks me up.

-- Anonymous, January 31, 2001

My dog only barks when we play with him. We let him chase us around the house or we play hide and seek (we're such adolescents) and he gets really excited. He might let out one quick bark to come in from the yard but that's only if it's really cold or raining. Most of my neighbors have good dogs that don't bark. The one neighbor that does have 3 huge, loud, barking all damn day dogs lives just far enough up the street that I don't hear it.

-- Anonymous, January 31, 2001

Howard barks at the door. TO be more precise, he lunges at the door and sometimes actually knocks bops into it while making these frightening noises. Growerr RowrRowrRowr

Then, when we open the door, he's all wags and love at whomever is on the other side of it.

The other times he barks are when he plays. He'll just get overwhelemed and Rorf Rorf Rorf like a big goober.

He's got a middle ground; he's a bit of a talker. But nothing like any of the hounds.

Howard is an apartment dog; we don't have a fenced yard. I think that if he were to spend time in a yard, he's become a fence chaser and barker.

By the way, I love the bassett voice.

-- Anonymous, January 31, 2001

probably because i am exposed to it all day i absolutely cannot stand dogs that bark for no reason! my dogs are not allowed to bark unless they feel threatened or when they are playing outside (i have 21 acres and no neighbours).

when they are puppies they are all taught to bark on command and then the 'no barking' comes easily. rottweilers are pretty serious dogs and not prone to what i call 'stupidity barking' but pugs can get pretty yappy if allowed to do so. my dogs do not get to go outside, eat, have a treat, get out of a down-stay or their puppy beds (ie go to the door), come in the house, go for a walk, etc unless they are being quiet. very firm and fully enforced rule at my house.

they all try it when they are young, but being made to stay in their crate while everyone else goes outside til they 'shut up' (!!!) soon helps them realise the merits of being quiet. show dogs cannot bark in their crates all day while they are at a show (well some do, but they end up getting debarked a lot of the times which i think is really cruel) or they'll drive everyone nuts! same goes for dogs boarding at the clinic...

(sorry to ramble on so.... bit of a pet peeve here!)

-- Anonymous, January 31, 2001

Our dogs don't bark in the house unless somone is at the door or their friend Sophie is outside (she regularly escapes from her house and comes to see if our dogs can play with her). Doc used to bark at random noises on the street, but he seems to have outgrown it. Mochi still occasionally flips out about something going outside, but it's never more than one or two barks, so we don't worry about that ... we figure that as she gets more confidence she'll do less of that, and it seems to be getting better.

Mochi does bark at Doc to get him to play with her, for which she gets a "hush." And sometimes if Doc has a toy she wants, she'll run to the door and bark, to make him think there's something out there. When he gets up to check it out, she runs back and steals the toy. She's devious.

Doc barks ferociously when people come to the door, but I don't mind that. It's the mindless barking in the backyard that drives me crazy. He doesn't spend much time outside anyway, but when he does he's either alerting us to some nefarious activity, treeing a raccoon, or joining in the neighborhood dog chorus (which goes on all day; there are outside dogs in this neighborhood that bark far more continuously than mine do).

-- Anonymous, January 31, 2001

Four things make our dog bark. Cats, squirrels, the three corgis from the next block and people who yell at each other in the street as they walk past our balcony. I swear the cats walk in the open just to torture her. Of course, we then have to look for said animals when we go for walks - even if it's been hours.

It wouldn't be so irritating if it wasn't for the fact that this always seems to happen when we're least expecting it. It's not continous, it happen at random intervals that are completely dependent upon whatever is going on outside. Plus, I feel bad for the guy walking the corgis because they then get tangled in their leashes and start fighting with each other.

Water seems to do the trick. A shot with the spray bottle and all is blissfully quiet again, at least until the next sudden outburst.

-- Anonymous, February 01, 2001

My parents breed Cairn Terriers, and they're the noisiest worthless guard dogs in the world.

Coming home at any time during daylight hours:

barkbarkbarkbarkbarkbarkbarkbarkbarkbarkbarkbarkbarkbark!

Coming home any time after sunset, even to the point of having to go around behind the house (past their enclosure), and climb over the back fence to get in when you've forgotten your house key:

(crickets chirping)

stupid dogs.

-- Anonymous, February 01, 2001

My Siberian won't make a noise outside, but when he's inside he has to talk all the time. Roowwrrrrr? rowwwrrrrwowoww, rrrowrr, rooowrrr, rowr. It drives me crazy, but at least my neighbors can't hear it.

-- Anonymous, February 01, 2001

See how you made me have to come in here and defend beagles?!

Oh, who am I kidding? Yeah, he barks . . . but only when he's not sleeping, which is always his first choice. He really is pretty good for a beagle, but only because he's lazy. He does scream if he happens to notice someone walking down the street or something. Yes, I said scream. Where I used to live (which incidentally had considerably more foot traffic), I had neighbors 2 blocks away who thought for months, until they met him, that there was a dog being abused in the neighborhood. That's my boy.

Now we live next door to 2 terribly loud barking dogs. Neither of us complains to the other. At least Symbol isn't out all day by himself barking, though.

-- Anonymous, February 01, 2001

There are only a couple of dogs in our neighborhood, but one of them barks all the time. I don't know what its problem is. Luckily, it's across the street and down a few houses so it's not right in my face.

There's also a parrot in our neighborhood that we can hear screaming all the time, but generally it's pretty quiet around here. Thank god.

-- Anonymous, February 01, 2001