Barking Dogs

I live in the country. I have lived in the country before, but not for many years now. And never in Appalachia. I’m sure there are houses in these mountains where you can mostly not hear barking dogs – and I threaten sometimes that, when my one-year lease is up, I’m going to find me one. But meanwhile I’ve got these dogs. People leave their dogs out all night, and they are likely to bark at any time during the night or day. And, when one starts, they tend to croon to each other.


They don’t bark all the time. So I focus on these raucous sounds being temporary, and that they will help me appreciate the times of real quiet even more – and some of that actually is happening. Or I practice letting these sounds be just one more organic sound (not cars or trucks) and to simply let them float by, to not judge them – and sometimes that works.


But there are times when none of my various techniques works, when I just can’t seem to let these noises go into background or to stop judging them. Times during the night when they wake me up and/or keep me awake - and even earplugs don’t give me relief. Then I tend to get angry, which really doesn’t support sleep. Or times just sitting out on my front porch when I really, really would like the peace that comes with hearing just the birds, the locusts, the nearby stream and the wind through the trees. But I don’t get what I want.


Somehow, I smell a rat. There’s something fishy about my response. (I realize I’m mixing my smelly animal metaphors, but work with me here.) I know there are lots of other people out there who get frequently annoyed by barking dogs. I only need to mention the topic and often my listener will immediately chime in with their own stories. Sometimes it’s not the neighborhood dogs but the neighborhood dog that drives them around the bend on a regular basis. So it’s easy to get agreement that barking dogs are a bane. But still I think my response is curious.


I have my own barking dogs – not in my yard, but in my mind. I have thoughts, feelings, memories that may not literally bark, but raise their own kind of ruckus. They are upset, complaining, whining – ok, barking. They will not be comforted. And, finally, I run completely out of patience with them. I don’t any more want to comfort them – I want to shoot them. I want to kill then dead.


I honestly think that these external barking dogs somehow remind me of those places in me that just will not settle down. That, maybe like the way that one barking dog sets off this call-and-response all over my hillside, maybe this angry, mournful sound also stirs up the banshee parts of my unconscious.


So what, then, can I do about all this – about the barking dogs out there and in here? I have no illusions that there is a solution. Barking dogs have been with us maybe as long as there have been us –and there is perhaps something essentially disturbing about them. Maybe they are meant to disturb us.


But I have a strategy I am trying for my own personal over-reactions. This strategy will not “work” in the sense of handling all this. But I think it can progressively work on me in some good ways.


It is in some ways a no-brainer that the perennially in-pain parts of my history/memory/ psyche need compassion. So I can practice that. But I can go further. Pema Chodron, the American Buddhist teacher, recommends a practice called “tonglen”. I breathe in the pain I am feeling, feel it fully - then breathe out healing for it. Then I take it to a much bigger level: I breathe in the pain of all my brothers and sisters who are feeling this kind of pain, then breathe out a wish for healing not just for myself, but for all of us.


This is where those barking dogs can come in positively handy. I want them to continually remind me of the primal quality of this kind of irresolvable pain. Pain will always be with us – with us people and with the whole animal kingdom. Or, as the Buddhists say, “all sentient beings”. The Buddhists talk about offering their lives towards the healing of all sentient beings.


I don’t know about offering my life, but I might be able to offer my efforts to respond with compassion rather than anger when I hear a dog bark.