Death From Above

There is a dog named Death From Above.

All right, that’s probably not what his owners call him.  But it’s what I call him.  He is a Springer Spaniel, and one of those dogs who takes any sort of movement within a hundred foot radius of his house as a potential threat, best responded to by tirades of furious barking.   His owners live a few doors down from me;  they have a tiny exterior landing connected to the second story door on their house, and in good weather (and sometimes not-so-good weather) they leave him up there, where he lies somewhat sulkily, without much to do.   Since the distance between their house and the next is modest, about the span of a city alleyway, his view of the street from that vantage is limited to a narrow aperture:  six feet or so of sidewalk, directly in front of the opening.  But should something (or anything) appear in that opening, he launches to his feet and unleashes like the Hound of the Baskervilles–  whereupon the alleyway acts as an echo chamber, magnifying his bark far beyond anything he could achieve on his own.  The effect for the passerby is comparable to being set upon by a Messerschmitt.

There is no point to this story, except that he got me again this morning.