I'm not a religious person but a miracle might be taking place here. Oddly enough, Harley the dog has suddenly stopped barking like a psycho. Or rather, his people have suddenly begun making an effort to stop the barking pretty darn quickly after it starts. Something is happening and I'm not quite sure what but I do know that the very annoying, actually far beyond annoying, in fact so far beyond annoying as to be seriously traumatizing, barking has suddenly diminished into something that is almost tolerable. Not quite, but almost.
This is very bewildering, considering my neighbors made no effort to stop his loud, psycho behavior at all in the past, and in the beginning one of Harley's humans (the wife, of course) even commented on how cute he was during one of his (many & frequent & very loud) barking fits. Of course, Harley is still barking but the duration and the violent force of his psycho fits have greatly diminished. He is also still rushing to the fence when he detects my presence outside, which immediately causes me to cringe and sets my adremal glands in a panic, but rather than emitting the shrill and unrelenting bark after bark after bark..., he is just giving off some halfhearted barks with not nearly the effort and stamina he has shown before. This is even true when he sees my cat; although his barking does still show more frantic when he sees the cat it does not contain that predator 'kill the cat' quality like before, and my cat has even begun to sit out in the middle of our yard again, and walk around a bit. In the house, I still hear him out there barking at who knows what (the breeze, or whatever), but oddly it never lasts more than a couple of minutes now.
Actually, this atypical behavior (of both dog and humans) began a little less than a couple of weeks ago, right around the time that we decided to take our barking evidence to the magistrate's office to file a barking complaint. This, of course, as we found out from the magistrate, was not the proper procedure to follow when complaining about the violation of an ordinance, and I'm still not really clear on what the procedure actually is, but the coincidence and timing are very strange. It is almost as if the neighbors are listening in on our conversations and heard me stating in no uncertain terms that it was finally time to file the complaint and go to court, and then decided they might finally be in really deep shit so they better shut the dog up...
Don't tell my neighbors this, but if that is what they thought it was, apparently, erroneous as it seems the process for placing someone in deep shit for the violation of an animal nuisance ordinance is not very well known by even the law enforcers around here...
Or maybe they heard us talking about putting up a fence that would cut off their use of the driveway that we share (part of our driveway, that is, that we have allowed them to use). That would really screw them up as their drive is very narrow and does not accommodate their large recreational camping vehicle...he he he...and it is much easier for them to just mindlessly pull into our driveway and drive up into their parking area (which, by the way, contains a visually annoying 5 vehicles, excluding the recreational camping thing).
I just find it very difficult to believe that my neighbors have suddenly developed a conscience...
However, after being tormented and tortured for 2+ years now, despite this deminished barking I'm not able to allow myself to be too comfortable with this newfound peace. I'd hate to get too comfortable and then find out that rather than a miracle this is just a temporary fluke. I continue to be leery when I step outside, I expect the barking when I drive up, still catch myself trying to silently sneak out of my house into my own backyard, find myself still whispering to my cats outside...I listen for it when I open the windows, when I'm preparing a bite in the kitchen, or going to the bathroom...some sort of PTSD or acute stress reaction, I assume. This would be noise induced trauma, I believe.
I'm continuing to devote way to much of my thinking processes to the potential next bark...but I gotta tell you that after my last massage and chiropractic treatment last Thursday my neck is not nearly as bad as it usually is the day following my visit to the chiropractor. In fact, Harley used to bark as soon as I drove up the driveway but this has not happened at all in the last couple of weeks. I keep expecting it but it's not happening. I'm not sure how to act now, as my whole life for the last 2+ years has been lived around this outrageous, ear splitting, mind numbing, revolting sound...
The creepiest thing is that one of the barking dog owner neighbors actually struck up a conversation, albeit feeble, with me 2 days ago...as if nothing had ever happened. It made me very suspicious.
In fact, my neighbor on the other side was coming over to take care of my cats while I was out of town for 5 days and she even commented on how weird it was that she did not hear any barking at all when she was here. It made her suspicious, too, and she has not been tormented nearly as much by this barking. Well, actually she has probably been very traumatized by me complaining about the barking and by her worries that the barking would drive me completely off the deep end.
So should I take a breath and heave a sigh of relief? I don't know, but I'm keeping the xanax close by.
