Our dog Rosie goes outside sometimes and, staring off to the adjacent yard, begins to bark. I try to get her to stop, and look around to see what might have caused her to bark. I usually find nothing and can only assume that she heard or smelled something strange that I’m unable to pick up on. Particularly at nighttime, I try to avoid thinking about all those horror movies that began with a barking dog followed by the hapless owner going out to hush them up … I don’t have to tell you what happens next.

Having an older brother sharpened my senses when I was growing up, since I was afraid of the dark and one of his favorite activities was scaring me. We watched lots of scary movies, including the Saturday midnight program that featured sci-fi and horror films in black and white. There was the occasional Frankenstein or vampire movie, but mostly they were the cheap sci-fi films of the 40’s, 50’s and early 60’s. It was a steady diet of Bela Lugosi, Boris Karloff and Lon Chaney along with lots and lots of the cheap movies without those big-name stars. They were scary!

Our shared bedroom had bunk beds, with me in the top bunk. Late at night, after watching one of those creepy films, I was generally rattled and ripe for his attacks in the dark of night. It was difficult to repel one of his charges without falling out of bed. It was worse when we broke the bunkbeds down and use them as twin beds, side by side. Falling asleep, I sometimes heard the rustle of my brother slipping out of bed on the side away from me, creeping beneath, then over to my bed. I waited in breathless expectation for him to reach up and grab me! Of course, sometimes I only imagined I could hear him sliding out of bed and coming across to grab me, and the anticipation was far worse than actually being attacked. I spent many sleepless nights trying to stay awake and determine if he was on the move or not.   

In my first year of college, I was assigned a roommate in the jock dorm — a big guy named Nelson. I figured it would be fun to play the same trick on him that my brother used to play on me. So, one night after lights out, I waited until it sounded like he was asleep, then stealthily crept over to his bed … and … “ARRGH!” I grabbed him by the throat. The next thing I remember was hitting the door on the other side of the room. Nelson didn’t see the humor in it and I admit that at the time I didn’t either.

I have been interested in what smells and sounds Rosie picks up on. Our older neighborhood has relatively small lots and the houses are close together with mostly wire fencing around the back yards, making it easy to see into the neighbors’ yards. There are only a few dogs on the block, so not much barking at any time, and I feel Rosie’s barks can be intrusive. We have plenty of squirrels, but they are not nocturnal, and during the day she chases them off quickly. Likewise, the stray bunny we get in the early mornings. At night we do get raccoons occasionally, and I suspect she can scent them in the compost pile or moving across adjacent yards or the alley. There are likely some miscellaneous cats wandering around, but the dog smell of our yard probably keeps them at a distance.

I understand that dogs don’t see all the colors that we do, so their night vision is probably a little like the old black and white scary movies we used to watch. However, given their enhanced scent detection and greater movement detection, maybe it’s not surprising that Rosie barks at night. She may not know exactly what or who is out there, but she can smell it or sense it moving. I think I’ll stay behind her when I go out to quiet her down, because she knows before I do if something’s there.

And anyway, she didn’t watch all those movies that my brother and I did.