Thank God! It's a miracle!

I feel your pain because Weena and I have the same thing. It's so much of a choreographic event that you can almost set your watch to it.

Barking begins around 9 p.m. 10:30 p.m., sprinklers turn on, spooking the dog, followed by more forceful howling and barking. 12 p.m., owners come home, but don't let the dog in. Morbid whining ensues until the sand man whips up some cough syrup and chamomile tea.

Sweet unconciousness soon follows.

Sigh. Being a responsible dog-owner myself, I hate nothing more than people who seem to think dogs are some kind of outdoor furniture. (Okay, I hyperbolize. I hate lying, stealing, cheating, hypocritical Republicans more. But these folk are a close second.)

Dogs bark for two reasons: warning or attention. If it's a warning, they'll give a couple of fierce woofs at the threat, then run to their people and give them that, "My god, there's a truck outside, aren't you concerned?" look. Non-concern from the people usually leads to a couple more "So there!" barks aimed at the intruder, then silence.

But the barking for attention, which happens when the people aren't around, is a problem. It's basically the dog calling out to the world, saying, "Hey, I'm lonely. Bring it on. Anything. Come on UPS truck. Come on cats. Come on chatty old ladies from two doors down. ANYTHING!" Oddly enough, dogs only seem to do this if they're not getting enough attention when the people are around.

That said, I have found the perfect barking problem solution, because my dog was a bit over-protective at one point, and would give warning barks at anything -- trucks, motorcycles, anyone coming in the gate, leaves falling. All it took was two or three shakes of a tin can full of pennies when she barked. For some reason, dogs hate this sound, and it makes them real quiet instantly. And I invoked the device after a neighbor very politely pointed out to me that my dog was barking a bit much.

Which is something to keep in mind. Until she said something to me, I had no reason to think that Shadow was annoying anyone. After all, she didn't bark all night, just at random times to specific noises. But, so notified, I did something about it.

And... with new neighbors moving in, you have influence, because you can play that "I've been living here for X years" card. Same thing my neighbor did to me. Of course, she's been here for 20 years. Hell, I haven't even been living on my own for that long.

But... nothing says you can't have your own can of pennies. The effective range of the sound seems to be pretty far.

I only wish I griped about the barking months ago, so that I could have been putting your advice to good use all this time! Still, I'm sure I'll have the opportunity to test it out over the next three days.

And they say you can't buy anything with pennies these days...