To Bark or Not to Bark
My friend Barbi has a little three pound Maltese dog that has the loudest, shrillest bark I have ever heard. It makes my ears ring. And thank goodness Barbi feels the same way.
She came over the other with her little fancy Burberry Plaid dog bag and that little yippee dog jumped out and my first thought was to grab some Advil. Ok, my first thought was to grab some duct tape but I did the right thing and I went for the drugs. A good thing too becasue Diamond didn’t bark, she was quiet and for the first time i actually saw her as a cute little dog and not some furry four legged barking machine Now I shouldn’t talk about yappy dogs because Joey has a bark that makes my ears bleed. Joey woke up to play the barking game with Diamond and was clearly winning by barking his little head off while Diamond didn’t bark back. Barbi sat there with a smirk on her face and said ” Look how good she is, I bet you wanna know how I got her to stop barking”? You bet I do sister! Well, Barbi got this collar called Spray Sense. It is an anti-bark dog collar. You fill the spray device with a Citronella spray and if they bark it activates the spray.
Look at the photo below, can you see the spray shooting up from the devise?
The spray is a fine mist that shoots up towards their snout and makes a small pssstttt sound. I could not get to the store fast enough to get me one of them collars. Joey was about to have receive a life changing experience, from a magic little necklace. I put it on him. I made door knocking sounds. Quiet. The cat went by. Quiet. Fabulous is all I can say. It really does work. He is not barking. Joey is a changed man, hey-now there’s an idea. Ok forget I said that.
Here, take another look. I want to make sure you can see just how this spray shoots up so you can get a good visual in your head for what is about to take place.
Back to the story.
So when Joey came to work the next day he was so quiet I didn’t even hear when one of my customers come over to see him. She picked him up, she cuddled him and was letting Joey kiss her all over her face. Ugghh. And Joey was so quiet. And then in a very high pitched voice she said ” OOHHH Joey” and instantaneously the device was activated and she was sprayed in the face. She dropped Joey and in the most shocked tone I have ever heard come from a person, she said- ” I think your dog just peed on me”. I should have been concerned, I should have been apologetic, I should have explained about the spray. I should have done any number of appropriate things but instead I clasped both hands over my wide open mouth and then I laughed. I fell over laughing, I couldn’t stop laughing. It was the kind of laugh where you can’t breathe and your stomach hurts. The kind of laugh when your eyes start to tear and your are laughing so hard that you don’t mean to but well, you pee in your pants. Yup, that was the kind of laugh I had. It was just a tiny little bit of pee but it was enough to snap me right out of my hysterics. And, in as apologetic a voice as I could muster I said I was so sorry and that she had not, in fact, gotten peed in the face and that it was only the citronella spray. And then for reasons I can’t explain I added “look on the bright side – you don’t have to worry about bugs and mosquitoes the rest of the afternoon”. And thank goodness she laughed, but not as hard as I had and I am sure she didn’t pee in her pants.