There are four major reasons, festered over time, that have grown my general dislike of dogs.
* Whenever neighborhood kids would torment a certain enemy of theirs (which happened often and for good reason), his older brother would unleash the German Shepherd, in attack mode, out of the yard to chase the kids away. This caused plenty of fear among the kids and only served to make them angrier.
* Neighbors that moved in later would allow a Pit Bull to roam the neighborhood. This dog was undisciplined and uncontrollable. Seeing that and hearing the reports of the nature of their attacks on people put more a fear into me.
* Another dog in the neighborhood was nice and friendly, but his owners didn't believe in general pet hygiene. You enter their house, you smelled old dog smell. You wouldn't want to pet the dog, friendly as he was, because he was never cleaned nor groomed.
* The dog living two doors down from me right now will start a barking spiel, even at 3 in the morning, for no discernable reason. He's always facing my house, and I can't have the windows open to listen for the birds in the morning if his barking is always drowning them out.
Dogs, however, do have a reason to bark, especially this last one. I would like nothing more than to muzzle this dog from behind, but the house occupants should get the same treatment -- because they only encourage his barking, then tell him to shut up before they egg the dog on more.
His object of hate is lawn equipment. He would bark at it naturally, until the lawn care person would shove the lawnmower at him, blades exposed. He barks too much, he gets attacked by a rake.
Consider Pavlov and his theory of controlled stimulus-controlled response. It rang true for food, it rings true for what they bark at. Even if the lawnmower is at my house, the dog barks.
I'm writing this as they take care of the yard over there. Normally they let him into the garage; this time they kept him chained up, barking up a storm. The mower came within a foot of his hind paws. As he kept barking, the homeowner threw objects at it, instead of putting it into the garage.
The dog is only three years old. Can we count on him to forget the memories of the lawnmower and all of a sudden become a model citizen in the canine world? He's stuck with those fears for life... and we're stuck with all the noise.
And this time, the owners are just as guilty as the dog.
