I love many kinds of dogs, dogs of all kinds. I do not, however, love all dogs. I hate yap yap dogs. I loathe yap yap dogs. I detest yap yap dogs. (Hate, loathe and detest all mean the same thing, but I wanted to be very, very clear about my position on these horrible creatures). You know the kind I mean, don’t you? I’m speaking of the type of dog that makes that repetitive, irritating, sharp yip that sounds more like a yap than a bark. Yap yap dogs. If you have one of those dogs, you might want to stop reading this particular post right now, before it’s too late! It’s going to get ugly.
When I was in college, for a long time I dated a guy who, when confronted with a small dog, (often, but not always, a yap yap) would say, “Look, honey, a cat.” (There are other types of small dogs that are actually quite likable.). It was a running joke; the reason he made fun of them is because many small dogs are ridiculous. To my mind, yap yap dogs especially are an inferior kind of dog. They are not, however, wimpy, fraidy cat type creatures. Oh, no, to, to their credit, they are brave to a fault, standing up for themselves and their people with no fear whatsoever! You have to give them that. Unfortunately, yap yap dogs make up for their small doggy size with the intensity and volume of their yaps. Not a bark, a yap. Like a man with a small penis and an enormous truck (the kind of truck that can actually hold an entire regular, normal man’s truck in its truck bed), yap yaps compensate for their ridiculous size with their horrible, sharp, yapping bark.
Our next door neighbor has a yap yap. Before he and his family moved in to their rental, the house to our left, I actually liked our neighbor, who we knew already. He had done some yard work with my husband, helping him set up our irrigation and fix some of the shoddy, existing stuff. Our neighbor on the other side of the yap yap dog owner knew him, too, for the same reason. Innocent of the hell she would create for all of us, she had even put in a good word on his behalf to the owner of the rental, encouraging him to rent to our yap yap dog-owning, now-neighbor. Selfishly, perhaps, we all thought we would actually appreciate him living there, sandwiched in between both of our houses. We could pay him to do regular maintenance on our yards, trust that his yard would be well taken care of, and know that we would have “a good neighbor.” All of these came to be true–except for the yap yap dog.
For a while, I think that our neighbor used to take his obnoxious dog to work with him, because the barking has gotten worse since the quarantine. Telling the dog owner wouldn’t help, because that is the nature of the breed. I don’t think there is anything he can actually do. I did see an ad for a $39.99 anti-bark clicker; maybe I’m failing by not just asking my neighbor to buy one. They haven’t lived there that long, so maybe I’ll just give them one for Christmas.
I would actually like to kill the dog.
However, killing the dog goes against my Buddhist belief in nonviolence. Since I can’t kill him, I fantasize about the ways I could do it. These fantasies are also against the teachings of Buddhism, but a person has to relieve her neighbor-dog stress somehow. I know! I could poison him (the dog, not the owner). I would buy some sort of fatal poison (not crippling poison) and a big piece of steak, combine the two, and give it to him as a tasty treat, like they do in movies. Actually, it wouldn’t even have to be a big piece; I mean, the yap yap dog is small. I’m sure the steak would be cheaper than the bark clicker thing (which probably doesn’t work anyway). I could probably even just put it in some hamburger instead of steak, but since it’s his last meal, I’d spring for the steak. I am not sure how I would go about it; do I just go to the Costco pharmacy and ask for the “medicine that is the best way to kill a dog?” Eh, probably not.
My neighbors like to barbecue. Since quarantine is over, we could invite them over for a celebratory barbecue in our back yard. I could serve the dog (plus a pig since since the little dog was so small) and they would never be the wiser. I would start the barbecue process long before they come over. I would rotate the spit, turning it around and around, cooking the yap yap long before they arrive so they won’t suspect. I would make a joke about how small the “chicken” was today, to explain that’s why I had to have the pig, too. Later, I could even ask if one of them would help rotate the beast. The feast. For some reason, this barbecue is my preferred fantasy-kill method for the yap yap. I can picture the annoying creature, dead on a spit, being turned and roasted, flesh dripping with some kind of BBQ sauce or just the fat dribbling off. Delicious. Probably wouldn’t eat it myself, though.
