Barking Dogs

I don't know how they can stand it. It's one of those magical nights that my parent's dogs are barking their brains out at seemingly nothing. No matter how often I get up to squint at my dark backyard or bang on the windows begging them to shut up- nothing. Just 3 dogs, ears up, barking into oblivion. One of them isn't even bothering to leave her dog house. It could be the neighbors outside having a party like they so frequently do. It could be a coyote or stray dog running around just out of my sight tormenting them. Or maybe they just like to hear themselves make noise. I think its the latter. Regardless of the reason it makes me wish they were cats. I can tune a lot of noises out, but I can't ignore an incessantly barking dog. It makes my blood pressure go up. For one thing it's terribly annoying and secondly its stressful. What the hell are they barking at? Is it an ax murderer? Are we about to have a massive earthquake? Has hell run out of room so now the dead walk the earth and my dutiful Shepard dogs are just trying to warn me? Who freaking knows. Not me. I have a test to study for and a reading guide to complete but everything is punctuated by barking. I can't keep a smooth ribbon of thought going. Even this post is difficult. I'm BARK typing along and BARK BARK BARK. It sBARK stops me in my BARK tracks eBARRARRRARRK every BARARK time. Its like having the hiccups. When everything is still you sit there and wait for the next one. It's about to drive me completely insane. It has wound down to one dog barking. The others gave up. It's down to my brother's dog Maggie. Maggie doesn't like to be outside at night, however, she loves to void her bowels and bladder in creative places all over the house. She now goes outside at night. Why not put her in a crate instead? She whines and howls and digs at it, then poops in it anyway. Why not let her out more often? You try setting an alarm to get up every hour on the hour to let a dog out that doesn't want to go out and goes in the floor anyway. She is a serial pooper. She has jumped in laundry baskets to poop, pooped in my brother's lego container, pooped in the bathtub, peed or pooped on every rug in the house to the point that there are no longer any rugs anywhere in this house. She also jumps on to kitchen counter tops to gobble dinner off the stove, and strings trash can contents all over the house. I really can't imagine my parents bringing home a worse dog for a 9 year old boy to get desperately attached to, so they are stuck with her, and when I am here to visit- so am I. I cope by complaining at length to anyone that will sit still and listen and presenting lists of no kill shelters to my mother.