Commuications from the anxious and the needy
Play
A young dog who barks constantly is often transmitting a message of loneliness
In the early morning hours, my poodle Wan-Wan wakes me up with nervous whimpers.
I’ve learned not to ignore the noises she makes. Through her range of canine vocabulary, she communicates what’s going on in the house and on the soi.
Her communication may not be directed towards me. In the afternoons, dogs on the soi begin barking, but not all together. One starts barking, another answers, and gradually all the way down the soi other dogs chime in, as in: “Hello! Haven’t talked to you since yesterday! How are you?”
Wan, however, knows how to catch my attention. When my white lady Mekhala is disturbing another cat, Wan gives me a gentle bark to tell me that a cat fight is about to start.
If a turtle is trying to come down the stairs, Wan has another bark, to tell me that the shell-guy is about to go where he shouldn’t.
When there’s a cat fight on the soi with lots of bad feline language, Wan has two kinds of moans, one to tell me that stranger-cats are causing problems, another moan to tell me that one of the cats involved in the heated argument is either Thep or Thong, the two soi cats who have moved into my house.
If Thep or Thong is involved, Wan looks at me nervously as she whines, as if to tell me to break up the fight and bring the boys inside.
So this morning, when Wan wakes me up, I turn on the light and watch her carefully. She’s on my bed, but she’s pointing her nose towards the outside.
Then I hear it, a series of high, sharp barks apparently coming from a house down the soi. I know most of the barkers on the soi, but I don’t recognise these particular cries. Since they echo, I know only that the dog is in a patio, a small, young dog, apparently.
Wan is extremely nervous, though, looking at me anxiously.
It’s not yet dawn, and although my neighbours are used to me wandering the soi in the night to grab Thep or Thong, I doubt that they’d be happy to see me peering into other people’s patios.
The barking doesn’t stop. As soon as the sun has risen, I go outside, only to meet my next-door neighbour Khun J. She shakes her head disapprovingly, but not at me.
“That dog must be sick,” she says. “The owners should take care of it, not leave it to suffer.”
It’s easy to find the house of the barking dog, and there she is, a young poodle, sitting in the patio. As soon as she sees me, she runs over, tail wagging, face smiling.
“Hello!” she says. “Hello! Hello! Hello!”
She’s not sick, just lonely, but perhaps her owners haven’t learned her language yet.
