Choppy By Number: Barking

A new Monday feature for you: Choppy by Number. I regularly wonder things about Choppy that ultimately come down to numbers – how many treats I give her in a day, how much she eats, how many squirrels she sees, etc. These are all quantifiable, but I never stop to actually keep track of the numbers.

Well, no more! As of today, I’m going to do a weekly feature where I keep track of something Choppy does over the course of a specific time period (by “time period,” I’m guessing most will be one day or less, because I would likely get bored of the experiment with any longer period of time).

Today’s post was inspired by Paul. Before we got married and he moved in, I didn’t really pay attention to Choppy’s barking. It happened, and unless it was her “big girl bark” (i.e., the really mad bark that makes her sound like she is within moments of killing the person/dog/other animal that has drawn her attention), I just ignored it. But once Paul – who has never had a dog before Choppy – moved in, he commented on her barking and I began wondering how often she actually does bark.

So, last Friday, I kept track of every time she barked and attempted to determine what she was barking at. Here are the results, with the time she barked first and the reason she barked second:

9:44 AM – People moving furniture next door (it went on for a bit – she barked on and off until 9:47 AM) – definitely not a threat, but you wouldn’t have known it from how mad Choppy was.

10:57 AM – Unknown. I’m guessing a dog in the park across the street. Or her shadow. Or just because she is a dog and sometimes she needs to express her feelings.

11:00 AM – Lawn mowers (again, it went on for a bit – until 11:03, when Choppy apparently decided they weren’t going away and the barking was useless).

11:22 AM – Truck driving by (it sounded like her sworn enemy, the UPS truck, even though it wasn’t); the barking segued into more barking at the lawn guys, who were still working. They still ignored her.

1:31 PM – Mailman! A daily barking feature of life Chez Choppy. In related news, he is terrified of her, so perhaps the years of barking have paid off if this was Choppy’s ultimate goal.

7:02 PM – The next door neighbor (who she likes and still regularly barks at). I would say she would eventually get over it, but our neighbors on the other side have been there since the day Choppy came home, and she still barks at them.

7:08 PM – One kid pushing another kid in a cart (the one pushing the cart had a fake sword, which makes him the most threatening thing Choppy barked at all day).

10:23 PM – A loud thump outside (still don’t know what it was. I’m going with alien landing).

10:30 PM – Paul pretending to bark at Choppy.

So, what did we learn? Over the course of the day, Choppy barked at nine separate things (plus one thing she barked at, at two distinct times). I was surprised she didn’t bark more at dogs walking by, as this is something she tends to dislike. Perhaps there were not as many walking by on Friday as normal, or she just wasn’t paying attention. Likely the latter (she regularly misses the mailman, because she enjoys her naps). She barks at a lot more people than I expected.

Overall, though, she didn’t bark as much as I expected over the course of the day, even if she did bark at more people than I thought she did – and when she barked, it was with reason (albeit not necessarily good reason – even with swords, I don’t think kids playing pose much of a threat). Perhaps I will redo this some day with her barking over the course of a week. That would be a far more representative sample of her barking.

Next week, I’m going to do something I dread: how much Choppy eats over the course of a day. Considering that today she had eaten six treats today within  the first two hours of her waking up, I’m guessing the one who comes out of this experiment looking bad will be yours truly.