Editor, The Record:
I have lived in Mission for nearly 20 years, in a subdivision that is fairly heavily populated. When we moved here, we could hear the crickets and frogs at night in the ravine that ran down the back of our property from Silverdale Creek.
Occasionally, we are awakened by the siren of a police car, fire truck or ambulance, or cat fight, and this silence was sometimes broken from a dog barking in the distance, and was soon picked by closer dogs nearby (our dog in the house was not exempt to this either), which warned us of possible impending intrusion of other animals coming down the ravine looking for food or burglars.
The dogs were our first line of defense against this, and it was not uncommon to find a single shoe, glove or a torn leg of a trouser in the ravine below. The dogs were doing their duty.
But those days are gone. Today, we are constantly woken up by blaring boom boxes, fireworks, motorcycles and cars with modified muffler systems, and yes, dogs that do bark for no reason, only because their owners have left them out all night.
Dogs do bark when they are penned or tied up and someone or something is tormenting or teasing them. Yes, dogs do need to go out in the middle of the night to relieve themselves, so do we as humans.
When you hear that dog barking, ask yourself why? There is always a reason.
Ron Wilkes
Mission