The Dog at the Door, and the Noise Outside It

A dog is both the reason we feel at home and one of the sounds that can keep us awake.

By Neil Solomon · 2 min read

Picture a couple named Gerald and Moira. They have a dog named Biscuit, and Biscuit is the reason they hesitated for two years. The dog is old and does not like change. The question was never "can we leave?" It was "can he come?"

I think many of us have a version of that hesitation. The animal sets the pace.

Two places

Sri Lanka. One woman describes moving with her husband and their dog to Hikkaduwa. By her telling, it was settled and resolved. The dog was part of the move from the start, not an afterthought. What I take from that is how much easier a decision feels when the whole household is in it, including the one who cannot speak.

Nepal. A different writer describes a night when dogs barked at a buffalo until three in the morning. She does not complain. She is tolerant, almost amused. I like that she names the sound plainly and then lets it be. The buffalo, the dogs and the dark were all part of living where she lived.

Put those two together and you get something I think is worth saying. A dog is both the reason we feel at home and one of the sounds that can keep us awake. It depends on whose dog it is.

What I notice

The two stories also show a different side of the same choice. In one, the animal comes along and the move feels whole. In the other, the animals belong to the street, and the traveler adapts to them. Both are fair ways to live. The first asks you to plan for a pet. The second asks you to be patient with everyone else's.

Neighbors' animals are part of the place. At home, we are used to fences and quiet and a polite phone call. In other places the line between a household and the street is thinner. I do not see that as better or worse. It is just a different arrangement, and it takes a few weeks of nights to learn what you can sleep through.

Gerald said it over dinner.

"What if the noise bothers him more than it bothers us?"

"Then we find the quiet corner of the house," Moira said. "He is old. He will find it first."

I think she was right. Animals often teach us where the quiet is.