I said, “Stop Barking!”. Whew, the pitch of the lady’s voice shrilled those words as she was describing how much her dog barked, and according to her, over nothing. I almost agreed with her because I didn’t see anything that would prompt the dog’s high-pitched sounds and intuitively, while communicating with him, it was hard to locate a ‘reason why’ until I caught that ’shrill sound’ in my ear canal. I got it. Further questioning of the dog confirmed that the noise volumn in the house was enough to make anyone shout. Once answered, I started to notice that the rest of the noise in this house was in the ’shrill’ range. The TV was blarring, the kids were screaming, the back door slammed and the phone kept ringing, ignored, of course, but the answering machine message chimed in loudly so as not to be missed. This was exhausting to say the least. I started to smile, what else could I do in the midst of all this chaos, and caught the attention of the little dog. He ‘knew’ that I got ‘his reason why’ and quietly sat down right in front of me and said, “See what I have to put up with here? How else can I compete?” Boy, he was right. Now not all barking problems are for this reason, but it was a wake up call to remind me that sometimes we people are just too noisy. No wonder we have the need to get back to nature. The next best thing to nature should be our dog and a little R&R in the back yard. But with noise competition, no wonder this little guy felt he had to make a big statement, maybe just to keep up with the rest of his family. Communicating with animals doesn’t have to be this loud.