Stone Soup by Jan Eliot for April 19, 2015

Was one of those four neighbors Val’s sister Joan? (Must’ve been one neighbor per panel starting with the yellow one.)

That dog seriously has a weird looking mouth in the red panel!

Time to get a muzzle.

Actually no dog should be left out for hours. Biscuit would not have barked if she were left in the house with a cozy bed to nap in.

When you leave home, you want your dog to bark.Far fewer homes are burglarized if a barking dog is there.And the size of the dog doesn’t matter, just as long as he/she barks.

A neighbor with a barking dog when they are gone is the neighbor from hell. Train the dog (bark collars work), take it with you or give it away.

Our neighbor’s Lab used to howl when he was away for the day (he worked construction but was home in the winter months and bad weather – the dog had a big yard, lots of shade, and a protective house). The only time he stopped howling was when mom ran the sewing machine with the window open.

My sister and I had a whole new wardrobe that (quieter) summer.

Sorry Val.

Dogs should never be outside unsupervised. You never know when some vindictive person will throw something in the yard to poison your dog. It’s been done before and the perps have never been caught. People who have dogs but won’t let them in the house, shouldn’t have dogs.

Val could have been in a rare “supposed to be gone longer than Biscuit can hold it and the neighbors with keys are away too” position. Normally between her family, Joan’s, Phil and his aunt, etc this might not happen, but sometimes a few hours with food, water and shade available is the best they can do, and since the dog had food and water calling animal control or the police wouldn’t help (dogs have to be barking for longer than an afternoon to be a nuisance, and the neighbors obviously weren’t used to it or they’d have given up or been used to it and so many wouldn’t have called)

There is a collar that sprays citronella. Much more humane and very effective. I’ve seen dogs that don’t associate the shock to the bark and end up with burnt skin.

You really shouldn’t leave a small dog outside alone. They could get swooped.