Evan X. Merz

In 2019 my neighbor got a dog. He brought it over to introduce it to us and to my young daughters. It was a small black lab, and I could immediately tell that it was purchased from a puppy mill. It had the characteristic look and health problems, even as a puppy, that inbred dogs get.

But she was rambunctious and as infectiously happy as all young dogs are. She had an energy that was off the charts. She wanted to be in motion at every moment of every day, and well into the night.

Unfortunately, my neighbors wanted a dog more as a security system than as a family pet. They immediately locked her up outside and wouldn't bring her inside even at night. Starting from that day she lived in their backyard, about twenty feet away from our house.

And boy did she ever love to bark. As soon as the sun went down she would start barking with grit and determination. Because she was from a puppy mill, she had bad vision. She would jump at every shadow, then bark for thirty minutes solid. After a few months she was no longer a puppy, so these were the loud barks of a 100 pound black lab.

We complained to them, and asked them to curtail the barking at night since it was keeping our entire family awake. They decided to fit her with a shock collar that triggered whenever she started barking. That was problematic because it was both inhumane, and it didn't even prevent her from waking us up. By the time she got shocked we were already awake, and the shock wasn't strong enough to consistently get her to even stop barking.

We wanted to complain more, but at that time my neighbor was diagnosed with cancer. This put him in the hospital for an extended period of time, and the recovery wasn't quick either.

Before the cancer diagnosis, they rarely walked Shaira. I only saw them do it once or twice. She might have gotten a walk once a week at best. Once my neighbor was in the hospital, she was never walked at all. Neither his wife nor his daughter seemed to want the job. This had a very negative impact on our sleep, as a dog less than two years old has a lot of energy that it needs to expend in some way.

So we started walking her in the hope that it would lessen the barking at night. When COVID hit it seemed to put the nail in the coffin of them ever walking her. So I walked her every day for a while, but it didn't seem to help with the barking very much.

We complained again and again and again. We were woken up hundreds, if not thousands of times by this dog.

But what could we do? Their response wasn't to bring her in the house. Instead they chose to get an even more aggressively painful collar that would tighten around her neck. I think it's called a choke collar, but it looks like something out of the middle ages. I saw her wearing it several times.

But it still didn't stop the barking. They wanted a dog to protect their yard, and that's what they got. Every squirrel that ran by triggered her. Every weird sound in the neighborhood set her off. If another dog walked by where she was fenced in she could bark for hours.

I'm writing this post at 8:30pm in 2026, as I sit here listening to her bark. I've listened to this dog for over seven years now, and it amazes me that she's still going.

Has the barking ever been justified? Has she ever succeeded in protecting her family from a vicious attack? Has the barking ever resulted in a good outcome? After seven years of barking at shadows, what satisfaction can she get from continuing?

On one hand, I want to get angry about it, but on the other hand I just feel like I can relate. Millions of years of evolution programmed this dog to be the perfect guard dog. She somehow knows, on a deep, instinctual level, that it's her job to protect her family at night, and even if she's never been called upon to do so, she's going to continue trying her best.

In a way, it's admirable.

I was laid off at Meta in May. That was difficult for me. Millions of years of evolution tell me that it's my job to work. Society tells me that my value lies in pushing myself as hard as I can every single day, no matter how I feel. No matter whether I succeed, or fail. No matter how much it hurts.

I was proud to get the job at Meta after working my way up at startups over two decades. Now I'm starting a new job at a similar tech company that needs experienced programmers like myself, and I just want to ask Shaira, "how do you keep going?"

We gave up on walking her a few years ago. We can't solve every problem in the world after all, but Shaira is still a loving, cheerful, playful dog. Despite a difficult life, she still gets excited when we come visit with her. She still rolls on her back to enjoy belly rubs.

Maybe it really is the little things that make life worth living.