The Hotline

Despite taking to blogging like a fish to water, I rely a lot on more traditional forms of communication for much of my local knowledge.  Of course, there’s the “newspaper” which includes all the bushes, trees, fences, fire hydrants, and telephone poles I sniff on my walks with Pa, but my real source of information and gossip comes from checking the hotline.

The hotline is the web of dogs situated throughout the neighborhood who call out news to each other.  Think of it like the game “I’m Going On A Picnic” but done with town criers.  Fluffy learns that the mailman has arrived on the scene and calls out the news.  Spot hears Fluffy’s news and spreads the word that the mailman is on the scene and a new dog just moved in next door.  Then Prince howls that the mailman is on Fluffy’s street, a new dog moved in next to Spot, and his (Prince’s) human is cooking hamburgers.  Before you know it, the whole town is barking and information is freely traveling from one street to the next.  

But the hotline isn’t just there for information transfer.  No, it’s also there as a superb way of causing a ruckus which, as everyone knows, is one of my favorite pastimes.  Here’s how you cause a ruckus using the hotline:

1. Stand at the front gate and bark a few times
2. Listen for the inevitable chorus of barks from nearby streets
3. Listen for the inevitable cry of humans calling their dogs inside because they are making too much noise
4. Smile to yourself and go back inside knowing that you got others in trouble.

But sometimes, there’s no one on the line.  I go outside and bark and bark and bark and no one responds—not one yip, howl, or “woof.”  Desperate for gossip and/or a hankering for trouble, in these situations I end up walking from one end of the property to the other—from the front gate to the outdoor “Land of No” to behind the garage—barking loud and long and listening for any response from any direction.

Today was one of those days.  I came charging out of the house in full voice and barked for two solid minutes without a single neighborhood dog responding.  Talk about depressing.