How to deal with the yapping dog that lives below you

There are options!

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In the unit below me lives what I can only assume to be the tiniest, puniest, vicious little dog with crusty eyes. What information has led me to this assumption? Let me tell you!

Every time I walk in or out of my building, I have to walk past the first-floor units to get to the stairs. And unless I am doing my best impression of a mouse, the noise I make alerts this little devil dog in #1A of my presence, which means that it is going to frantically yelp at me from under its owner’s door, and it won’t stop doing that until I close my apartment’s front door on the second floor.

My personal issues with this little yappy dog

1. The yaps are loud

2. The yaps are annoying

3. Often, the onset of the yaps actually scares me, because my building is silent otherwise

4. The dog literally is freaking out and that stresses ME out

5. The yaps continue well after I finish climbing the stairs to my unit

6. I have never seen the people who live in 1A and I wonder if they can tell that they are home to the public nuisance of the building

7. Do dogs get anxiety medication? Surely they must. Surely this dog might benefit from a consultation with a licensed dog psychotherapist.

When annoying things happen in life that are out of control, we usually find a way to adapt. That’s Darwinism, or something. But here is the most petty, stupid grievance of mine, and I don’t see myself getting over it. It has become extremely personal.

“You know what kind of dog yelps like that?” I’ll think, my eyes flashing angrily as I make up way up to floor two. “A stupid little dog that has no idea about the world! A dumb animal that is objectively idiotic for thinking I am a threat.”

These are the thoughts of someone who is personally offended. Because I am personally offended by this dog!

Where do I go from here? I suppose I should either:

• Say something to the tenants of 1A (never in 500 billion years would I ever do this unless I was under the influence of a cocktail of narcotics)

• Try to let it be part of my life.

Let me take a measured breath and consider the two options.

Okay, I’m going with the latter! Thank you for giving me the space to decide on this path. Luckily, I have thought up several ways that I might be able to make this issue a little bit more bearable.

Strategies for making it through this situation

1. I could put my AirPods to their highest volume and blast ‘4 ÆM’ by Grimes every time I have to walk past 1A, risking hearing loss but potentially drowning out the dog.

2. I could install monkey bars on the first-floor hallway, enabling me to silently (and sexily) swing my way in and out of the building.

3. I could wait until the dog — sorry — dies. I am not sure how many more leases that will be, but I know for sure it is no more than 10-15 leases, and it could be as few as 0 more leases. I have yet to figure out how to tell a dog’s age by how they bark.

4. I could go to veterinarian school, committing my entire studies to how dogs experience fear, threats, anxiety, boundary-marking, and more. I could lead a team of researchers to discover new ways to guide dogs through their own mental health, which would result in a new generation of dogs that don’t see other tenants of their own building as threats. Then, I would pivot to public policy, pushing through new laws that require ALL dog owners in America (but especially in Bushwick) to utilize my research methods to cure their dogs of anxiety and of barking loudly.

5. I could undergo exposure therapy (this is me taking the high road), recording the dog’s yaps and then using that sound as an alarm for waking up, laundry, cooking, etc. That way I would no longer be frightened by the dog’s yaps.

6. I could build a slide out of my window into my building’s backyard, and then I could build a ladder so I could climb over the fence and exit on fully a different block than mine. (Alternatively: I could learn how to paraglide and then jump off of my roof, which would allow me to exit onto my actual block).

7. I just realized that paragliding and sliding are both effective ways to get DOWN, but not so much effective for getting back UP. So #6 we might need to work on.

8. I could never leave my apartment ever again.

So, what I know for sure is that I definitely have options. And when you’re trying to get through something, it helps to attack the problem from multiple angles. Wish me luck!