We once had a neighbor with a small walking mop of a dog called "Tuffy" that they often used to leave alone in the house, not just for one day, but for two or three days at a time. When left alone that way, that dog would whimper, cry, whine, howl and bark from sunup to sundown and those pitiful noises would carry all over the block. It drove us and our other neighbors absolutely NUTS to have to listen to that.
I spoke to Tuffy's owners and they absolutely refused to believe me. They told me they had left dishes of food and dishes of water right there in the kitchen and when they got home, Tuffy would greet them jumping all around and with its tail wagging like it was some kind of happy puppy. Clearly to them, the dog had been just fine.
That deliberately obtuse response was all that ever happened. As it happened, Tuffy was quite old and died after we'd endured perhaps two or three years of those experiences. Thank heavens Tuffy was never replaced with another dog.
Now we go fast forward twenty-plus years to today during which from somewhere down the block, we could hear the sound of a dog barking. That barking began sometime this morning and persisted all day long until a little past sundown. The immediate neighbor of that dog's owner must have been put through hell today.
A dog is a pack animal. A dog doesn't want to be left alone. A frightened dog can't be told that its owner will be coming back. If you leave a dog to its own resources, don't assume that all is well because it won't be.
Stop torturing your dog and stop torturing your neighbors.
Make some kind of genuine provision for the dog's well being in your absence.
To borrow a line from Mr. Carson in the television series Downton Abbey: "Take steps, Mr. Mosley. Take steps!"
For a related cartoon, please see: http://archive.jsonline.com/comics/32402404.html?feature_id=Mutts&feature_date=2017-01-29
Posted by: John Dunn | January 29, 2017 at 12:31 PM