This is a little pet peeve of mine. Or maybe it’s a big one. We live on a well-traveled road. Our sheep pastures abut the road. Our guardian dogs do their job, and bark at anything in the environment that’s out of the ordinary: pedestrians, bicyclists, deer, coyotes, and cars that slow way down or stop. Usually it’s just a minute or two of casual barking and then the thing is gone and calm returns.
But there is this phenomenon that I can’t figure out. Several people who like to drive by reeeel slow, and let their dog hang half out the car window and bark like crazy. And then our guardian dogs bark louder, a much more escalated bark. They go bananas and run the entire 600 feet of fence line to track this invader of our peace and ward it off. And all this ruckus makes the border collies bark inside the house, then race hells-bells out the dog door to see what’s going on.
Lots of people do it, but some cars I recognize, because they are regular and repeat offenders. It seems it’s a favorite pastime of many; and they must be people who live nearby, since I see them so often.
Why? Why do these people do this? It’s so annoying. I hear our dogs alarming as if someone just landed a helicopter in our field. So I stop what I’m going to go see what’s wrong. And then it’s just this, these drive-by harassers and their obnoxious, loose-in-the-car pets. Do they enjoy creating and watching the ruckus? Are they just trying to look at the sheep in spite of their rabid, spit-flying, hanging-out-the-window pooch? Are they herding breed owners saying to their stock-deprived dog, oh, looook, sheeeep! Don’t you wish you lived there? How can these owners tolerate having a hysterical dog leaping about in the front seat, barking until it’s hoarse?
I can’t understand it. When I travel with my dogs, they are snugged safely inside of tied-down airline crates, and I expect them to ride quietly. Lunatic barking in the car is not a behavior option I make available to my dogs. Enough of my dog show acquaintances have had dogs killed or seriously injured in even minor car accidents that I never let mine ride loose in a vehicle, it puts them at risk.
Part of me wants to see one of these dogs lean just one more inch out the fully open window, smack on the pavement at moving speeds and incur a big vet bill. But of course, that’s mean, it wouldn’t be the dog’s fault.
So, please, for the love of God and peace and quiet, if you are one of these people, stop it. It makes me crazy. Just push the little button to raise your electric window, maintain the speed limit, and keep your frothing, racket-making canine companion inside the cab until you’ve passed by our otherwise quiet country farm. Ok then, that is all.
July 9, 2012 at 12:39 am
I like quiet, so part of me sympathizes. Part of me suspects very strongly that somewhere on the internet, a pedestrian and a cyclist have posted angry blog entries about the enormous, scary dogs in the sheep field who bark at them for having the temerity to pass on a public road, and why does their owner allow this?!?
July 9, 2012 at 3:06 am
Dan, I’m sure you are probably right. Most bicyclists who pass tend to talk at the dogs, and make comments that make me smile, like informing each other what breed they are (but they always get it wrong.
). I think most people get it, that the dogs have an important purpose, and seem to speak in admiration of their work and comment how “beautiful” they are. Cars drive 60 mph on our road and there isn’t much shoulder, so pedestrians are less common. And when people buy property here, they have to sign a waiver saying they understand they are moving to farm country, where there are “sights, smells and sounds” of farming; and in our county, that definition includes the barking of livestock guardian dogs. I guess the difference is the dogs bark fairly casually when there is just a basic passer-by, but it becomes frenetic when it’s dog-on-dog, so I just don’t understand why people would incite it on purpose.
July 9, 2012 at 10:37 am
When I lived in a downtown tourist town, people would ride by on motorcycles without mufflers, going 5-10 miles per hour, revving their engines to find car alarms. When they would hear the warning bleep, they would punch the gas to make the alarm trigger. I watched a pair of people do this 4 times around the block, setting off 3 dozen or so car alarms (mine included) before I deactivated it. Some people are just a-holes.
July 9, 2012 at 1:01 pm
Michelle, I can sympathize…fortunately my sheep/goats/LGDs are over the hill away from our road. I do however have some obnoxious neighbors that think it’s a great way to exercise their dogs to let them fence fight with my dogs that are in my fenced yard as they walk by (some will actually stand there and wait until there dog makes 10 or more passes). I’ve gone out and yelled at my dogs (though what I really want to do is yell at them because my dogs don’t act like that when just people walk by or even have their dogs on leash) and had them actually say things like “oops sounds like those doggies are in trouble!”. I don’t know what it is about people that like to torment dogs and the owners that live with those dogs….if you figure it out let me know.
July 10, 2012 at 12:11 am
CF, huzzah on your dog rant. You can add a p.s. for those pickup guys who let their dogs romp on the postage stamp beds of their trucks and bark at every living thing in their field of vision as they pass by. Nothing destroys a bike rider’s ruminations as much as a vicious dog suddenly ruckusing an arm’s length away. And what about the dog owners whose pooch attachment is so great, doggie must ride shotgun with them wherever they go? What’s with that? You pull into a parking spot at Freddie’s, exit your car trying to remember all the items on the list you’ve left behind on the kitchen table, and suddenly, inches away, there’s a gnashing of teeth against the window of the adjacent vehicle, accompanied by a frenzied “I’ll tear you to shreds,” barking. And what about grandma and grandpa (who perhaps shouldn’t be behind the wheel in the first place) driving to and fro with their lapdog as a buffer between them and the steering wheel! Use it as a rear view mirror pendant, for god’s sake.
All the above are the very same responsible dog owners who superheat their darling doggies to death while they do their coupon cruising in the airconditioned shopping malls. Shock collars?? They should come in sizes for the human neck!! TMJ
July 10, 2012 at 3:53 am
LOL, Tammie- I think it must be that some people just define “playing together” differently.
Bill- no! That is crazy annoying. I always found those Harleys traumatizing when I lived in town too, they are ear-splittingly loud.
TMJ, indeed. Supposedly it’s a $200 ticket for having a dog unsecured in a pickup bed, but I’ve never heard of it being enforced. Too bad.
July 13, 2012 at 7:46 pm
I live on one of those roads – fast speed limit, much faster traffic, bicyclists, no sidewalks – and I’m dealing with suburb vs. rural problems, too. Seems a lot of folks think our idyllic little properties exist for their own visual pleasure and/or amusements. I don’t mind people enjoying the view as the pass (it is one of the great pleasures of driving). I recently had to “suburbanize” part of the property to deter trespassers, making it less suitable for ag use but, boy, the passers-by were literally giving me thumbs-up for beautifying the place. They just don’t get it.
Let’s face it, I live close-in because it takes a job to support a farm anymore, instead of a farm to support a family, but that means I live in the land of chicken-comes-from-a-store and country-roads-are-for-shortcuts, honk-honk-honk if a tractor dares slow ‘em down. We had osprey nesting here, but the idiot trespassers scared ‘em off. Osprey aren’t any help on the farm, but given the pressures on raptor populations, I feel mighty protective of any that make a home here.
Wish I could silence those dogs for you. All I can do is empathize. Peace and quiet out here is a delight when you can get it.
July 14, 2012 at 2:45 am
Harrietnw- it is a funny paradox, isn’t it? I feel lucky to be farming in a yuppy region because the market for naturally raised food animals is strong and people are willing to pay good prices. And being on a busy road has its pluses – I’ve sold lot of lambs to people who found us by driving by. But being so visible is a trade-off, we are more likely to have complainers, nosey parkers, random stoppers-by, etc. too.
You raise an interesting point that I haven’t been able to put my finger on, but I think you are right. Some people who work in the city and have high paying jobs do view farmers in a certain way, and partly for their quaint amusement. I, too, work in the suburbs as a day job, and I always feel like I have to switch gears between the two cultures. My daytime coworkers versus my farming peers- two different planets!
July 17, 2012 at 7:47 pm
I’m new, haven’t sold an ounce yet, so maybe that experience will change my mind.
That yuppy thing, too complex for for this format, but I will say that working with nature is like interning with a mega-star – all you can do is coax, encourage, try hard to understand and do the right thing, hope it’s more successful than disastrous – it’s humbling. The yuppy gonna-be-a-star, gonna-be-rich, gonna-be-the-best-parent-everrrr self-importance is maybe not so conducive to perspective and, with it, empathic, considerate behavior like shutting your dog the heck up, respecting property boundaries and taking one’s trash to one’s own trash can.
Also, the land is so big people don’t seem to accept that someone LIVES here. I see trash on the off ramps, not in the suburbs so much, then all over the beautiful countryside. Like they won’t trash someone’s home – and they can conceive of a suburban lot being a home – but the eagles’-snakes’-cattles’-goats’-sheeps’-farmers’ home is too far from their reality of “home” for the mind to embrace. Or maybe they’re just idiots.
November 26, 2012 at 5:50 am
[...] window and a little toddler hung out and squealed with delight over the animals (just like those drive-by dogs do!). Which made the LGDs bark like crazy and spin around. Which made my two renegade lambs, one [...]