Cubbe often puts her paws up on window sills and barks out windows. We know we
shouldn't allow it, but she loves it so much. Let's say it's a self-rewarding
behavior that would be almost impossible to train out of her. Besides, she's
not much good as an alert dog if she's trained not to look out windows.

This afternoon she was using her people, big animal, something's really wrong
bark for a long enough time that I got up to look. I could see nothing except
Jim's car oddly parked, nose in the driveway, hind end out in the street. Since
he'd just come in from mowing the lawn and often moves the car around when doing
so to make it easier to get in the garage, I discarded my first thought that
someone was stealing the 1990, 120,000 mile Volkswagon and went to ask Jim if
he'd parked the car that way. Besides, no one seemed to be in the car so, if
they were stealing it, they were going about it in an odd way.

Jim jumped in surprise when I asked him if he'd moved the car half into the
street and ran outside after modestly dressing first. (I ran outside in pajamas
as I haven't half his couth.) The car gets its brakes fixed first thing in the
morning.

But back to Cubbe. She seemed to know that the car didn't belong in the street
like that, and the pitch of her bark indicated that she believes Volkswagons to
be especially big animals, bigger even than people. I told her sincerely that
she was a superiorly good dog. At that, she continued barking out the front
window long after the car was put back in the garage. Praise is a wondrous
thing.

--Lia