After I had spent the whole morning whining I set to wondering if dogs ever lose their voices. Our Mistress says it would be quite a good thing every now and again if we did and yesterday apparently was one of those times. I don’t know how well you know our breed, but we do have quite interesting voices. Our Mistress says we have a range of vocabulary that far exceeds any other breed she knows. At times it is pretty much as though we have a whole language at our disposal and can use it to communicate pretty much anything we want to. Our voices are also very loud and resonant. It’s not hard to believe that you could hear us right across a valley or that you would know if we were telling you that we’d counted the cows and they were all present or if we had run out of toes to count on and needed help. The noise we are best known for amongst our owners is rooing. We don’t all do it and I’m proud to say it isn’t one of my traits, but many of our breed have a tendency to roo at strangers. You’d know what a roo was if you heard it as that is exactly what it says. Basil, one of Shadow’s sons is famed for his rooing and does it quite a lot, but he’s not alone by any stretch of the imagination. I bark more than roo. Shadow was taught to howl by Andrew which has long since proved very annoying to our Mistress. She is the only one of us who tends to do that. Wilma has a higher pitched bark and our Mistress finds it quite ear-splitting when she does it close to her ear. It is no exaggeration to say Wilma can cause temporary deafness with just one breath of barking.
Maybe on balance I can understand why some people opt for small dogs that get described as yappy, but are never going to outdo a heavy metal band at full pelt.
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