What Happened to Yesterday?
“Hey,” Bernie says, looking up from the newspaper. “This is pretty interesting. Researchers at the University of Massachusetts and Hampshire College – isn’t that a hippie place? – have come up with a reason for why dogs bark.”
Whoa! Too much at once. Hippies? I know hippies – you can find old ones out in the desert. I like their smell – there’s something about that in Thereby Hangs A Tail. But a whole college of hippies? I could smell that from very far away. And what was the other thing?
“They’re saying dogs bark – ” Right, that was the other thing. ” – when they feel conflict. The old theory was that the domestication of dogs turned them into a kind of adolescent, since mature wolves and coyotes seldom bark. But now they think the stresses of unnaturally confined lifestyles are behind all the barking.”
Stresses? What were those again? I barked for no reason.
This entry was posted on Saturday, August 8th, 2009 at 7:58 am and is filed under Chet The Dog. 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.
4:06 am on August 8th, 2009
I wonder if any of those researchers have ever had a dog for a friend.
5:07 am on August 8th, 2009
I doubt it.
5:15 am on August 8th, 2009
Oh c'mon– that conclusion makes a lot of sense. To a person, or, *this* person, anyway. Although it isn't only conflict, because wolves in th e wild come into conflict and don't bark. It's *internal* conflict. That's what I call 'heavy.'
9:43 am on August 8th, 2009
When the mailman or this bad guy in a brown uniform comes up on our porch, I bark like crazy to chase him away. It works – they leave every time.
11:24 am on August 9th, 2009
Not to sound like one of those human valley girls types, but AS IF! Some humans are beyond silly. I bark when I feel like it and for all sorts of reasons – some of them quite happy and stress free.
5:05 pm on August 12th, 2009
Well, that explains a lot about Iggy then….