Twit-ish Bitch

/ Diane Henders

After months of unusually mild weather, winter finally decided to kick our soft wimpy West-Coast rumps last week. The rest of Canada plunged into deep-freeze temperatures of -30°C to -50°C (-22°F to -58°F), and here on temperate Vancouver Island, we went down to -10°C (14°F).

But I really like to sit outside every morning and drink my tea. Most people would consider subzero temperatures a good reason to change that tradition, but I’m pig-headed dedicated.

Before I start this story, I should note that we live out in the boonies. Gunfire isn’t exactly usual but it happens, especially during hunting season. So it’s comforting to be able to identify firearms by the sound of the shot. The flat ‘bang’ of a distant shotgun doesn’t concern me much, but the ringing report of a rifle never fails to make me hurriedly estimate range and direction. 

Next point: Our nearest neighbours have dogs. One is a good watchdog that only barks when a potential intruder approaches. The other is a brainless twit that barks just because she likes to hear herself. 

(I’m probably judging the dog too harshly. She doesn’t bark all the time. The owners are good neighbours, responsible pet owners, and all-round nice people. They say the female barks whenever she can smell a bear. There are a LOT of bears around here and they don’t always hibernate, so it’s certainly possible.)

But regardless of whether the bitch is a twit or I’m just a crabby old bag (or both), the end result is the same: The barking sprees get annoying to the point where even I, who love animals and would never harm one, start harbouring dark fantasies about making the damn dog shut up.

So.

I was sitting out on my porch, wrapped in a blanket and sipping tea; and the idiot dog was barking her fool head off. After twenty minutes of steady barking, a sour thought flitted through my mind: “There’s nothing wrong with that dog that a bullet to the brain wouldn’t fix.”

A shot rang out. The dog fell abruptly silent. My subconscious snapped “.22 rifle, damn close!” 

Some silly part of me thought, “OMG, did I just do that with the awesome power of my mind?”

An instant later my smarter self realized, “Holy shit! Somebody just shot the neighbours’ dog!”

I scurried indoors and texted the neighbour, whilst keeping an eagle eye on the road just in case the continuing shots were coming my way.

The neighbour texted back with reassuring rapidity: Nothing to worry about; he’d just gotten a new .22 and was sighting it in. It hadn’t occurred to him that we’d even hear it at our place, since nobody in their right mind would be sitting outside in the cold. (He politely omitted the last part of that sentence.)

I drew a deep breath of relief and got on with my day. 

But… I haven’t heard the dog bark since then. Hmmm. Remind me to stay on good terms with that neighbour. Just in case.

*

P.S. Could you please answer three quick one-click questions? (Anonymously, of course.) Click here to go to the poll. Thanks for your help! 🙂

Book 18 update: I’m on Chapter 14, and Aydan and her co-workers are locking horns with their new boss after less than a day on the job. Even John is keeping his head down!

33 thoughts on “Twit-ish Bitch”

  1. I live on a rural area, too, though not nearly as it was when I was a child x number of decades ago. Got quite a chortle from a neighborhood blog where an apparently really new resident breathlessly reported that she heard “gun fire” the night before. “Aye, lassie,” I thought to myself, “and in the morning and the afternoon and twice as much on Sunday. It’s in the country you a being!”
    Well, that’s not exactly true. Yes, that is what I thought, but not with any fake Scottish accet. I don’t know that I’ve ever thought of lassie as anything other than a collie who saves little kids from a well and the only time I ever even tried a Scottish accent was for a skit in a fifth grade play and I had tonsillitis the night of the play and didn’t even get to go. I’ve no idea why I wrote it that way but it turned out okay so I’ll leave it be.

    But… What I’m really writing about is an educational epiphany I experienced while reading a book on the Freddy the Pig series, specifically “Freddy Goes Camping”. The protagonist of my little eye opening experience was none other than Bannister, Mr Camphor’s long suffering butler. Now, I had been reading way over my grade level since before I started to school but there were some things I read that I couldn’t relate to real life. One such thing was a character saying “Tut, Tut” or “Tisk, tisk”. I couldn’t figure what that meant because I was sure I had never heard anyone say “Tut, Tut” or “Tisk, Tisk” in actual conversation. For a while I had convinced myself that those were expressions used in New York City or maybe Canada. But while reading this book and Bannister “Tut,tutted” some plan concocted by Freddy and Mr. Camphor it hit me what the expression really meant. It is, of course, the written form of that sound you make sucking your tongue behind your front teeth.
    I was so relieved! Another mystery of words in print revealed by the wit of Walter R. Brooks. Thanks to that single revelation I’ve been fortunate enough to “Tisk, Tisk” and “Tut, Tut” my way through two to three hundred books a year for nearly seventy years. It’s hard to beat the Bean Barnyard for some basic education.

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    • LOL! Yep, these are the things that keep us up late at night… 🙂 It’s funny; I vaguely remember my mom making that “tsk tsk” sound when I was kid, but I haven’t heard anyone do that for decades. Maybe it’s a rural thing, too.

      I chuckled at your ‘Scottish’ accent! That brought back traumatic memories of a skit I ‘acted in’ (I use the words in their loosest sense) in high school. It was supposed to be a one-act play, and we had all learned our lines (we thought).

      But it turned out we’d learned them too well: About half-way through the play, one of the other kids segued from one of their lines to another that was supposed to happen much later in the play. Well-drilled as we all were, we seamlessly picked up from there… only to realize several lines later that we’d skipped a big chunk of the play, and now the end wouldn’t make sense to the audience. We stood paralyzed for a few moments, looking toward our teacher, who was supposed to have been monitoring the whole fiasco. She stared uselessly back at us.

      In a flash of brilliance (yeah, let’s call it that), I motioned frantically to the curtain operators, who, after a moment of well-founded doubt, mercifully closed the curtains. Having grown up on a farm, I had a farmer’s ‘fix-it’ mentality, so I told everyone to reset to the scene where we’d gone off the rails, and we’d present the missed part of the play. Then the curtains would close again, and re-open with us set up where we’d left off.

      The curtains opened, closed, and re-opened, and we hobbled through the rest of the play as best we could. Fortunately the audience was only parents, so they were kind. My dad said afterward, “I kind of wondered what was going on, since it was supposed to be a one-act play and it ended up being three acts; but it hung together all right.”

      That was my first and last venture into show biz, and it still makes me shudder. I much prefer to be the writer behind the scenes!

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      • LOL! Sounds to me like you handled the situation very well. Perhaps your forte is in directing? Any notice that your series has come to the attention of movie or TV producers?
        I still hear the “Tisk, Tisk” occasionally. I don’t know whether the decline is from the expression falling out of favor or whether our expectations have been so lowered that hardly anything deserves a “Tisk, Tisk” or a “Tut, Tut” anymore.

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  2. I have to start with the way we both start our mornings….ok it hasn’t gotten as cold here as you guys have, but I’m a morning coffee (tea late afternoon) drinker and I sit outside every morning wrapped in a blanket (looking creepy per my wife). We have a small private backyard and part of our setting is under the big fir trees that keep most of the typical drizzle this time of year off of me. If I had heard what you hear I would have freaked thinking the dog got killed. Fortunately we live in an area that if we were to hear gun shots it would mean the end of the world was approaching……

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  3. I have to say that I’m with you regarding barking dogs. I love dogs too but when they poop on my lawn or bark incessantly, it gets annoying. Sometimes, I hear shots too, but I’m not as astute as you regarding the type of weapon used. There are bears around here but coyotes are more common. I didn’t see bears till Covid. Then I saw three in one year. My new neighbours have dogs but so far, they have pretty much behaved themselves. I want to stay on good terms with them as they have horses and ponies. She teaches riding lessons to kids. She says she will do some adults too, but I haven’t seen any yet. Maybe when it gets warmer, I might see if I can finagle a ride somehow. Snow is expected tonight and tomorrow.

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    • Yeah, you’re still getting winter out there on the East Coast, aren’t you? Our brief “winter” lasted all of a week, and now it’s +13°C. The weather forecasters say that might be it for cold weather this year. I really hope we don’t get what we did last year: Lots of nice warm weather so everything started to bud out, and then a hard frost that killed everything. Grrr.

      Ooh, your new neighbours sound promising! Maybe they need help exercising the horses. 🙂

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      • We’re expecting snow tonight and tomorrow. Every year, it seems Mother Nature chooses a day for the weekly storm. This year seems to be Mondays. That’s a good thought about the horses. The ponies are a bit small, even for me, but the larger beasties could be a possibility!

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  4. A barking dog can be annoying but one gets sued to it if one has a vested interest. Lucky barks at anything that moves outside: people, bikes, other dogs walking by. It doesn’t matter if he is inside or outside the house. He is loud and obnoxious. He is “Lucky” I have not shot him. This neighbourhood has many dogs so barking is heard often. Mostly the dogs are indoors but if outdoors they bark at each other.
    Fifteen years in a Ukrainian village listening to dogs bark all the time has me trying to find patterns to the barks and wondering if the patterns have a meaning.
    As long as you have no grizzlies, you should be safe enough. Black bears are not aggressive.

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    • Yes, I’m glad that so far all our encounters have been with black bears. There apparently are grizzlies on the Island, but I’ve never seen one, and I hope to keep it that way.

      I suspect that barking is like anything else — when you hear it all the time, you automatically tune it out unless there’s a sudden change to it. After living here for seven years, I’ve found that when I’m working outside, I usually couldn’t tell you whether the dogs barked or not. As long as I’m busy, I don’t really pay attention to them. It’s only when I’m sitting quietly that the noise gets intrusive.

      And who knows? Dogs probably are communicating. Sometimes the dogs have distinct “conversations” with other dogs farther down the road. One will bark, then fall silent until the other barks; and then the first will reply (over and over). Maybe it’s just “Five o’clock and all’s well!” “Five-oh-five and all’s well!” 🙂

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  5. Aaaargh.
    At both the barker and the gun shots.
    Sadly barking dogs are familiar territory here. And some of them bark all day (and night). Gun shots are a decided rarity I am pleased to say. As are bears – though I suspect my nature loving self would be MUCH more comfortable with them than with the barker or the shots.
    And yay for the first cup of tea outside. It makes a wonderful start to the day.

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    • It truly does! Even when the weather is snowy and cold, or rainy and gloomy, just being outdoors (and warmly wrapped up with a cup of tea) is a treat.

      I know that the dogs are just defining their territory, and when you get right down to it, they’re doing exactly what birds do… it’s just that I enjoy the birds’ voices a lot more. 😉

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  6. I once lived next door to a lovely family with a Jack Russel Terrier and absolutely ZERO space between his barking little self and my bedroom window. One night I couldn’t take it any more and I stood outside their bedroom window and screamed until they came to the window and started screaming back. At which point I quietly explained that this is what it’s like to be me every night and I’d be making a nuisance
    complaint with the police if they didn’t fix the issue. Dog was kept inside at night after that. I have no problems with a barking dog during the day, they’re dogs, that’s what they do. But at night it’s a hard no for me. Obviously they gave me a wide berth for a while but in the end all was well. They really were lovely people.
    Glad your loud friend is ok. I definitely would have been hyperventilating over the timing of it. And living that close to bears is my worst nightmare so you get my “balls of steel” award. (Excuse the expression, couldn’t think of an alternative.)
    Have a great day! Hope you thaw out soon. We did. Pretty quickly too.

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    • We’re all thawed out now — the weather turned warm and rainy and the foot of snow is gone already. Crazy weather!

      Argh, I can’t even imagine how annoying it must have been for you to have that terrier barking right outside your window. The smaller the dog, the shriller the bark. Those high-pitched yaps go right through my brain like a dentist’s drill. I’m glad your neighbours fixed the problem.

      And thanks for the “balls of steel” award! I’m not sure I deserve it, though. I think I’ve just gotten used to seeing bears and realizing that if I don’t bother them, they won’t usually bother me. (It’s that ‘usually’ part that keeps me respectful.) 😉

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  7. That was quite the mind trick. A timely post, Diane, as we have been listening to hundreds of stray/loose dogs barking here in La Paz, the last month. Sometimes in the middle of the night, which sucks. Usually, they mostly shut up when we are in bed.

    Worse is their aggressive behavior when we walk by with Maya. When they’re alone, it’s usually fine. But, when they congregate and become a pack, it’s wise to make a big detour, or have a spray bottle with vinegar and water ready. Yes, we have used it.

    Stay warm!!

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    • Wow, you have to be vigilant about everything down there, don’t you? I’d be scared by facing a pack of loose dogs at the best of times; and having to protect my own pet would be even more stressful.

      And it was a heck of a mind trick, wasn’t it? The timing was downright eerie. I was glad to know I hadn’t actually done it, though — can you imagine how awful it would be if stray thoughts like that could come true? Yikes!

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  9. Quick, separate reply. I select something in the poll but get: “Server error. Please try again.” And that’s after allowing third party cookies (and my ad blocker is already disabled for your site).

    I’ll try again later on. Seems like a technical issue beyond your control.

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  10. I remember my first year or two of living within the city limits of Detroit. Festive! A lot of residents are shooting off firecrackers to ring in the New Year. Only until my buddy told me those weren’t firecrackers.

    I can’t say I cared about the guns one way or the other, until my better half and I witnessed part of the Vegas mass shooting in 2017. I’ll have to tell of that adventure another time.

    But for the canine perspective and vocalizations thereof, let me introduce you to our neighbor. We call him Dog Nazi. They have one dog they brought home a decade ago (who is as dumb as a bag of rocks, and barks at everything…especially wheels, like when the bikes or the barbecue come out of the garage, she’s barking rapidly an inch or two from the wheels), and added a second pooch a year and a half ago.

    They have had both since they were pups. The dumb one is a good example of Dog Nazi’s mindset. Still a pup, only had her maybe 2-3 weeks, under an umbrella during a particularly bad storm, in the backyard saying over and over, “Go potty. Go potty. Go potty. Go potty.” (Like a pup is born knowing what that means?) And as she got older, “Leave it!” Everything was, “Leave it!”

    That was ten years ago this coming August, and with the second dog, he’s only louder. It seems like he expects them to march out of the house in lockstep, hunch up and poop on command, and march straight back into the house. His means of “supervision” is constantly correcting them. “Leave it! Ah. Ah. AH! Noooo! Go potty! Leave it! Go potty! Let’s go! Get otta there! Go potty!” During the day, it’s tiring. But at night when everyone is heading to bed, it gets a little old.

    And the barking…when he’s out with them, they are out of control, especially the big dummy. He yells (“Leave it!” of course), and threatens them with the collars. Yet he never puts them on. But Mrs. Neighbor does. When she’s home by herself, there’s not a peep out of either one of them–the collars are on, and they do what dogs do outdoors with any fuss at all. There are unexplained barking fits indoors (that we can hear from inside our house) that we can almost set our clocks to.

    That’s a classic case of perhaps replacing the owner and not the dogs! 😁 (And I get the feeling Mrs. Neighbor is thinking the exact same thing. Or she’s contemplating a shock collar for him, and sneaking Ritalin into his Manwich…)

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    • Bahahaha!!! Poor Mrs. Neighbour, and poor you. We’re unbelievably lucky to be surrounded by really nice neighbours out here. (And even if they weren’t really nice, at least we’ve got some distance from them. It’s probably easier to be good neighbours when you don’t live three feet apart.)

      I absolutely love to see dog owners with happy, well-trained dogs – it’s such a treat to see the trust between them. Sadly, I don’t see that very often. I think your neighbours would drive me rapidly nuts. (Or more nuts, I guess.) 😉

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      • Yeah…three feet apart is what it feels like here. We have only a single-width driveway and 40-inch strip of grass (or stones, concrete, etc.) separating the houses. Not really what we wanted, but at least the neighbors are nice…even if one or two are slightly unhinged.

        As for being driven nuts, for me it would be a very short ride…

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    • That’s an excellent point about the dog. Maybe she is smarter than I think! 🙂

      I’d be MUCH more worried about the sound of gunfire if I lived in a town. I’m not particularly happy about hearing it out here; but at least here it’s much more likely to be a responsible hunter than some trigger-happy wack-job. (Or I guess it could be a trigger-happy wack-job hunter; but I prefer to cling to my illusions.)

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