Soon to bed. Hopefully to sleep.

The folks behind us have, in the past couple months, barricaded off their patio and lawn area from the sliver of ground that separates their house from our fence. And consigned their young male, blue-eyed Samoyed-type dog to that "run".

Which is now nothing but bare dirt. He has even reached as far as possible under their wooden fence to scour out the vegetation that used to grow between their fence and our chain link.

Which is good from a landscaping point of view, because that was a bitch to weed and cut, but he has really got to be bored.

We have occassionally played tennis ball with him, when he shoves it under the fence to our side, but that is apparently lost now.

He has dug several deep pits around his prison, at least a foot or so deep so far. Half hoping he undermines their foundation, just to get the attention.

And he has been howling, mainly at night. He may have been doing that all spring, too, and we just noticed in recent weeks because we have the windows open in the heat. Last night was the same, but even more pitiful than normal. Accompanied with the sounds of wood cracking and splintering.

As I lay there in bed, I kept having this horrible fear that they had gone off on vacation somewhere, and our neighboring canid was going to die of neglect within 20 meters of our window. So, around 1:30, I'm out there with a flashlight, talking to Blue Eyes, letting him sniff my fingers through the one crack in the slats that allows such contact.

And today, in the daylight, I did a better inspection of his "pen."

A huge water bowl, with clean water still left in it. An empty food bowl, but with dry kibble scattered in the dirt around it.

So. He's not starving. Nor dying of thirst. And he has shelter from the sun.

He's just alone.

And lonely.