To Woof or not to Woof

Barney was a very friendly dog, he never was afraid of any person or dog. After a while, I was afraid that if I had a burglar or someone come into my home, he’d be bringing them the ball, showing them where the silverware was, c’mon in, that sorta thing. Many times people would come to my door and he’d be standing at the door, wagging his tail.

So I taught him how to bark on command with a hand signal. I didn’t want someone at the door hearing me say “sic ‘em”, so I made a hand signal of tapping my open hand onto my fist. He got quite good at it, and people always had to try it out when I told them about it. Especially kids. Sometimes I wish I hadn’t shared that info. lol

One night, around 3am, I had a visitor. They knocked on the door, and lo and behold, Barney barked! And it wasn’t the hand signal happy bark, it was a full-throttle growly gonna-bite-your-ass-and-chase-you-down-the-block bark. I was thrilled. After that I slept much better at night.

Teaching him how to bark on command came in handy on another occasion, when I was living with my best friend. I came home late at night after work, and my key broke off in the front door. My friend was a very sound sleeper, and I couldn’t reach her window to knock on that. And this was before cell phones were common. Barney was waiting for me inside the door, wagging his tail, wondering why I wasn’t coming in. I started giving him the hand signal to bark, which he started doing, which woke up my friend. Who was nice enough to open the door. J