Our neighbor behind us likes to put his dog out back. No big deal. Except that the dog is sad out there. So he barks. And barks. Barks. Barks. Barks. Aaaaaand barks. This seems to happen mostly on Friday evenings. You know –  after a long week, after we put the kids in bed and just want to sit on the couch, veg, watch t.v. and compute.

Bark. Bark. Bark.

Why, hello, Sparky. Happy Friday evening to you.

That – by the way – is the opposite of what my real life reaction is. If you are from Philadelphia, you know EXACTLY what I want my reaction to be. That’s right. After 40 minutes of incessantly loud and continuous barking, I want to fling open my back windows and yell “Put your dog in your house!” anonymously into the shared driveway from a sea of perfectly pointed brick rowhouses. To be fair though, 40 minutes of barking is about 10x more gracious than I would have been in Philadelphia.

Sadly, though, if I do that here in Portland, it will be very clear that it is me for a few reasons:

1. Because I am probably the only one in my neighborhood this super dog-friendly city who would do such a thing, and,
2. Because my Philadelphia accent is very strong and would clearly give me away.

I did walk over to their house one night after over an hour of barking. But they weren’t home. Which is probably for the best because I don’t have one clue what I planned to do if they were. We probably would have ended up like Doug Heffernan in the classic King of Queens episode “Dog Days” where he ends up taking the dog for walks every night to ease the barking. Not quite the result I am going for. Haha.