Walter is not a barker EXCEPT when someone comes to the door (although he has been getting lax about that lately. It just occured to me in the last week or so that that he might be losing his hearing, he also ignored my vocal commands more than he used to (without looking like he is deliberately ignoring me, which he has always done but it's obvious that's what he's doing). I'm trying to be more consistent about using the hand signals that we have, fortunately, always had as part of his training) so he is actually pretty reassuring when there's a noise and he just keeps sleeping. He will bark at racoons or whatever that come into the yard, but those are technically intruders, I guess.
Damn, now I have a meeting. I just got up to thinking about today's issues!
Erin, I am a couple of generations removed from Jewish but "Mazel Tov" is always a good all-purpose general congratulatory thing to say.
Which reminds me of the greatest thing one of my ex-bosses ever said - he came in to work all filled with purpose one morning because he'd just found out that a colleague at another big important local hospital had just become a dad and he wanted to send a bouquet to the happy new parents. He had just started a master's program in medical marketing and was temporarily filled with enthusiasm about marketing and PR and monkey-grooming as good business practice (his baseline state ordinarily is Lewis Black with an MD), and so he had me call a local florist right damn quick to get those flowers out right away for maximal monkey-grooming effect.
"The florist wants to know what you want the card to say."
"To say? Jesus, I dunno."
"Mazel tov, maybe?"
"Yeah! Mazel tov! That's great!"
"The florist also wants to know how much you want to spend."
"Ehn, not more than about thirty dollars. Guy's a real prick."
Monkey-grooming!
Back when I had a samoyed as a child he chased a prowler out of our back yard one night. Also, when the neighbor kid I really didn't like climbed the fence into my backyard he jumped up with his front paws on the kid's shoulders and peed all over him (which he never did with anyone else). Good dog.
Erin, I don't think you need to come up with a specifically Jewish way to congratulate someone for the birth of a child. A warm welcome or congratulations is fine.
Thanks, guys. I'm trying to brush up on common Hebrew courtesies for the bar mitzah. Cause I'm a nerd like that. And I like to be respectful of other people's religions and their religious traditions. Also, it doesn't hurt that she has spread rumors about me as a kind of stupid lower class inferior, so since that's not the case I'm brushing up on my Hebrew.
The dog is probably better for letting me know if there ever was an intruder or something.
Darby only reacts if it's me or my sister coming in. Lucy was much better at spotting axe murderers, though most of them were cleverly disguised as dogs.
On the farm, our dog would bark at any unfamiliar car that pulled into our driveway. Once I came home with a friend in my parents' car, and the dog was confused when the stranger got out of the familiar car. She did start barking, though.
The Biscuit used to helpfully only bark at drunk people. I realize this is probably not an issue for most people, but for us it was really helpful to know ahead of time if the person wandering up to our door in the middle of the night was a) a student, b) a stranger stuck on a stretch of highway with no other source of aid for twenty miles, or c) someone drunk looking to start trouble. All of which happened with some regularity.
Then when we moved, he didn't have drunk people to bark at, so he took up barking at the garbageman (he always succeeded in chasing him away, and therefore always continued to bark at him) and the Schwans man, but in a slightly different, where's my treat, sort of way.
Now he's deafer and doesn't really bark at anyone.
