Howling Dog

The whole evening was a torture for me. Did you ever hear a dog howling, not barking? And that too, right in front of the house when you come home tired and deserve little bit of peaceful time. Absolute pathetic!

I got up from my reclining chair, dragged my angry feet to the front door and closed it. Closing may be an understatement. I literally slammed the door and bolted. Unfortunately, my house is not a soundproof one.

I do not know about my neighbors. It seemed they are less disturbed. Maybe the dog was in front of my house, and not theirs. They might have been thinking that it was my duty to take care of this noise pollution. Or they may be having a secret perverse pleasure pitying me. Whatever, it was almost two hours now.

I can shout at the dog to go away. I tried it for couple of times. But it seemed the dog liked the vocal boxing match and howled more.

I thought of taking a piece of bread and throwing it at this brat and hoping that it goes away. Maybe it was hungry, maybe it needed something from me. Maybe it had come to take some revenge on me for some odd reason.

I thought for a while. If this obnoxious dog eats the bread and still does not go, what could I do? It might become a dirty habit for this brat. It will come back every evening and start howling. And I would end up listening to this eardrum shattering noise. And I have to feed him every evening. I believe they call it Pavlov’s theory. It means that it is the classical conditioning of an emotion through sensual repetition and somehow this theory is related globally with examples from these animal species.

Either I would have to give bread and see what happens with a prayer that this brat disappears from my doorstep. Or I stay put like a sphinx and pray that it gets tired of howling and walks away. Where the first option had risk, the second option needed patience and forbearance. And finally I decided. I switched off the TV to avoid further cacophony and moved to the bed room with a hope that the noise level would be low there.

The decision was, indeed, a good one. The noise stopped after an hour or so. I was very glad and went to check. I opened the front door and there was no sign of this ugly street dog. What a relief!

That night while trying to sleep, a sudden thought came to my mind. In my corporate life, there are many such brats who make a lot of noise. Sometimes they want attention and sometimes they want to divert attention. However, they do not use their vocal cords. They use mails with tools like copy and blind copy. Their mail howling irritates me. Sometimes it makes me very angry and puts a difficult challenge on my personality to remain cool as a cucumber. They also stop howling and shouting when the mails are repeatedly ignored. And peace prevails.

I got a new name for such brats in corporate life……………Better to Ignore This Cheap Howling person (BITCH)