Barking is a subject that people always want to hear more about. For dogs, barking is one of our forms of communication. Is it our fault that humans do not understand us?
I suggest that we share the fault equally. Personally, I think that is being pretty generous, since humans are supposed to have the power to reason. As we have discussed previously, you already know that dogs do not have a clue as to what you are saying. To us, your constant talking can be just as annoying as our barks are to you, unless you are telling us how great we are. Then, we completely understand, and we do not find it annoying. No matter what you are saying, we listen to your words, and we act like we understand what you are talking about. Can you say the same when we bark?
For the most part, dogs do not just sit around and bark, bark, bark, bark, bark, bark… That is, unless we have something to bark about. Humans will not always understand that we have something to bark about because you are not capable of hearing and sensing the things that we do. Often, your dog may be sitting in the back yard and for what appears to be no reason to you, he begins to bark. Some people will listen to the barks for a few minutes, but it is inevitable that someone will stick their head out of a door and yell, “QUIET” or even something more colorful. Sometimes, that will be followed up by insulting us and calling us names. It is very seldom that the area humans searches for the reason that a dog is barking. You should learn to use that power of reasoning to realize that we do not bark just to hear ourselves bark.
For example, perhaps we hear a dog or two barking a few miles away. Bear with me for a few minutes as we assume that these dogs are sharing directions to a new campground filled with people and discarded food with their barks. These two things are among the most important to dogs, because we enjoy the company of humans, and food is at least as valuable to us as money is to humans. Because humans do not hear nearly as well as we do, the “colorful” human did not hear the barks of the dogs located a few miles away.
I would like to share a story with you to illustrate my point. One of Mom’s former students lived next door to a family that had a dog that lived in the backyard. The dog was tethered to a fixed object, and we all know how I feel about that. After many months of living in the backyard, the dog suddenly started to bark, and and he continued barking constantly. After several minutes, his owners went to the back door and yelled at the dog to cease. The dog did not. He continued the constant barking for several hours, and the family began calling the dog “colorful” names and throwing things at him. Not once did the humans ever bother to go outside and look into why the dog was barking. They ASSUMED that the dog had suddenly become retarded, stupid, untrainable, bad, ridiculous, loud-mouthed, ungrateful, demon possessed, and numerous other words that contain language I am not allowed to use. The people that never checked to see why their dog was barking did allow their five year old child in the backyard to play with the dog. The dog appeared to be his normal self so long as the child remained near the house, but if the child tried to venture into the “dog’s part of the yard,” he barked, growled and snarled to keep the child from approaching. It appeared that the dog was guarding a certain area of the yard. Finally, after viewing such odd behavior when the 5 year old went into the backyard, the adults decided to see what was so important to this dog. As the man approached a weeded area near the dog, he began barking more and more and even tried to snap at the man, so that the man would not enter. Sensing that the dog was trying to tell him something, the man picked up a stick and began 
to poke around in the weeds. After a few moments of poking around, the man saw the reason for his dog’s odd behavior. There was a very unhappy five foot rattlesnake sticking its head out of the weeds!
The most important thing about this story is that you should not just assume a dog is trying drive you crazy or to be bad with his barking. He may, in fact, be trying to save your life! Mom never told me what breed of dog potentially saved the lives of his family, but I think it is safe to assume that it was not a Jack Russell Terrier. A Jack Russell would have killed the snake and placed it on the back porch as a present to the humans.
Every day we hear of encounters between humans and dogs. Unfortunately, not all of these encounters are pleasant. In fact, some can be deadly. I think that it is time for me to reach out and help to make these encounters as pleasant as they can be. By “me,” I mean “my humans,” and by “my humans,” I mean “mom.”
