As you are no doubt aware, K was away in Nova Scotia this year (she's back) on a teaching contract, and I was keeping the home fires burning here in Edmonton. A couple of months ago, one of our across-the-alley neighbours pulled me aside and told me that she was bothered by our dogs barking at her when I left them alone for the day. Our dogs bark at people in the alley, and there's really not a whole lot that we can do about that, because they see it as territory they have to protect. Combined with a little separation anxiety, that makes for some barky dogs when she walks out into her driveway. We try to be good neighbours, however, so I started using a bark collar we'd previously bought and put it on Ruby, since she's generally the barking ringleader.

This worked up until a couple of weeks ago, when Ruby - having caught on to the bark collar being associated with a mild shock when she barks - went and hid the bark collar somewhere (we have yet to find it). I guess at some point yesterday, K talked to the neighbour and mentioned that we'd been putting the back collar on her and that we were trying to control the barking.

Later that day, I was out raking in the back yard (we're either replanting sod or we're building a couple of new garden beds, I'm not sure which yet) and the neighbour called me over again. "Shit," I thought, "she's going to complain more about the dogs." As it turns out, this wasn't the case. After talking to K, she talked to her sister (who lives next door) about how we'd been putting a bark collar on the dogs, and they both decided to call a vet and ask about it. As soon as they heard the dogs were receiving shocks (mild as they may be), they decided that they couldn't have it on their consciences. She'd come over, almost in tears, to tell me that she'd rather be barked at than have the dogs hurt.

I assured her that it was only a mild shock and that we'd actually tried it on ourselves (complete truth - K tried it because she wanted to make sure it wasn't hurting the dogs), but thanked her and assured her that we wouldn't put the collar back on the dogs -- and in fact couldn't, because Ruby had hid it so well. Of course, I can't help but think she continues to see us as monsters: first for having dogs that bark at her, and now for shocking them into submission...