So, I was listening to my dogs bark and bark today, and as I got annoyed with it, somewhere in the back of my mind a strange thought bubbled to the surface: “Maybe they’ll stop when they get hoarse.”
Now, I am pretty sure that if I tried barking or screaming every 2 or 3 seconds for extended periods of time it’d do a number on my throat. Yet my dogs can do it without a problem. So, my question is: can dogs eventually get hoarse from barking? (and if so, is it a common occurrence?) Or are their throats different from those of humans, and don’t get irritated from extended high-volume use? Is barking less stressful on a dog’s throat than it sounds?
A way to explain it is to understand that a humans’ vocal cords are very thin (compared to a dog). This is because we need to make noises at many different frequencies. That’s necessary since we speak in a wide range of sounds which are necessary for our different languages. Dogs on the other hand have simple communication methods. Bark, bark, bark, bark, bark. Thus, they didnt need to evolve thin vocal cord to make sounds they wouldnt need.
So basically their vocal cords are simply thicker and therefore less sensitive. That equals the ability to not get “hoarse” as fast as their human counterparts. Im sure dogs do get hoarse eventually because with my yappy pomeranian, I notice that when she barks continously, the volume shes at does seem to decrease and she does seem to get tired eventually.
Our dog used to get hoarse after he had spent some time in boarding kennels. I suppose he had barked more than usual during his time there. It usualy took a couple of days for him to recover.
Our next door neighbors’ dogs - part pitbulls (the dogs as well) - get a little hoarse after barking at us all day. But not nearly enough.
Sometimes I dream about putting a noose on a long stick to strangle each in turn. Slowly…ever so slowly.
Yes, I do report them, but CT laws re barking dogs have no teeth. A dog owner here can lawyer up, plead not guilty, and string the legal process out for years - literally, for years.
My sister (who has had to ship her cat via plane a few times) told me about a dog on one of the flights that wouldn’t stop barking at some chickens in the hold. It evidently barked the whole damn way because when it was unloaded at the end the pooch was making a full-on barking effort but little or no sound was actually coming out.
My cat used to purr herself hoarse - she had a very loud purr (as a kitten it could be heard the next room over) and if she really got going for a while it’d start to sound like somebody with laryngitis. Didn’t seem to hurt her but she’d have to stop and rest before starting up again.