I’m not sure if this is normal dog behavior. These dogs haven’t stopped barking since 11 pm. It’s annoying and I can’t go to sleep. Even my own dog is barking in the other room.
Bit of background: I live in a small but noisy neighbourhood. Almost every yard has a dog, including my own. While they do bark from time to time, it’s never been anything like this. They’ll usually be barking at someone walking, or someone on a bike, someone in their own yard, or even at each other on occasion. At this point, I’ve learned to drown it out.
Last time, while getting ready for bed, I noticed everything was quieter than usual. I didn’t think much of us and hopped into bed. I usually like to scroll through Tik Tok before going to sleep. After scrolling for a few minutes, I started to hear barking. I didn’t think much of it because, like I said, barking isn’t unusual. But when it didn’t stop after a few minutes is when I started to get annoyed. They were being really loud, but there wasn’t anything I could do.
After about half an hour, I put my phone down and started settling down. The dogs still haven’t stopped barking. Even my own dog, Luna, started barking. My dog is well trained and doesn’t usually bark at other dogs or bike riders. This made me uneasy, but I brushed it off thinking that, because the other dogs have been barking so long, maybe she was fed up with it too. I chuckled at the thought of her telling the others to shut up.
I remember slowly drifting off to sleep, but being brought back by the dogs going crazy. Loud barking and fence rattling, which was unusual as the dogs in my neighborhood don’t normally jump up onto the fence unless there’s someone close to them. I was about ready to tell them to shut up, but I had already made myself comfortable.
I checked the time. 12:23 am. I wasn’t sure what the longest these dogs have barked for, but I wasn’t sure they ever did it to this extent. I tried sleeping again, but I couldn’t. I just stayed up and browsed Reddit for a while, trying to wait out this mess.
But as minutes stretched into hours, I started getting more nervous. At this point, it’s about 1:43 am and I have classes tomorrow. I went out into the living room to check on Luna because she hadn’t stopped barking either. When I checked on her, she was staring at the front door and barking. I tried to distract her or turn her attention away from the door, but she wouldn’t budge. After a while, I gave up and went back to my room.
At about 2:18 am, the dogs went ballistic again. This time, I could hear Luna’s claws hitting the ground like she was jumping up repeatedly. This is when I really started to get paranoid. It’s been about 3 hours and the dogs haven’t stopped barking.
I went to go check on Luna again and, as I suspected, she was jumping up and down, still staring at the door. I told her to shush it and went to check what these dogs could possibly be barking at. I looked out my curtains and I could swear I saw someone standing in the middle of the road, barely lit by the street lamps. I was pissed because they were just standing there, torturing these poor dogs. I looked back at Luna and noticed she had stopped barking and started whimpering and backing away from me. I tried calling her towards me, but she wouldn’t come.
At this point I chalked it up to some homeless person with nothing better to do than scare poor dogs. I headed back to bed. But when I got back to my room, I heard Luna barking again, but this time, it sounded closer, as if she was barking at my door. This freaked me out as she’s never barked at me.
About half an hour ago, I could swear I heard all the barking get closer. I tried going back to sleep, but it was too loud. I stared at my window for a moment when I could swear I saw a silhouette of a person walk across my curtains. This window faces out to the side section that leads to my backyard. I hoped there was no one.
Now, it’s 4 am and all the dogs seem to be barking at me at this point. Everything is too loud. Now I can hear Luna barking and whining somewhere else in the house, but it isn’t the same barking I heard before, she was clearly terrified. I’m not sure what to do now, but I just hope I didn’t forget to lock the back door again.