Dog Garden Network

Here in Haukivuori, there is a network of Dog Gardens. The owners of the gardens don't want anyone to know. Instead of growing grass or having children play in their yards, they have mazes of chain link fences connecting little modules of dog groups, unclassified by size, shape or breed.

My local garden has a minimum of 27 dogs, but sometimes there seems to be a few more or less. It is about 300 meters from where I stay.

There is not much noise pollution in Haukivuori, so if a door should open, or if a person shifts positions in their sleep, it causes a wild caucophony of singing bored dogs. The many different sizes and shapes of dogs make all different types of barkings, woofs, or waachk-waachk (japanese translation). It sounds sometimes like a symphony. Nothing baroque or flowery but like a really angry (maybe a little inspired by Lord) version of 'The Rite of Spring' for the dark of winter. But these dogs wouldn't participate in a Russian song, they are Finnish. So it would be the Finnish version.

The anger inspired by the Dog Gardens in itself is an orchestra of frustration. There is nothing easier to bring up in a conversation with the nearby home dwellers than the dogs. As commonly happens, when someone is drawing a map for me of the area, all I must ask for orientation sake (and to create some excitement) is where the dog garden is. The fury invoked by the dog songs might be compounded to produce a sound much louder than all the actual 24 hour howlings do. The time spent plotting against the garden include: plans to move the dog part of the yard to the other side of the house where the sound would be absorbed by the forest, recording and replaying the dog sounds to the dogs and the owner at an extreme volume, creating a way for the dogs to escape and then catching one and torturing it in front of the others, and my own: hiring a someone to conduct the orchestra. A professional. Hiroshi, can you do it?

Ahh, and the network. Today I met Ana, the public school art and cooking teacher from Mikkeli- the nearest city. This renaissance woman also runs marathons, or she did before she broke her wrist in two places playing volleyball. During the last marathon, she passed the second dog garden of her time. She was so fearful (as she is of our local dog garden) of the dogs escaping and chasing her that she couldn’t pass near the yard. She made a detour and sacrificed her running score time. In a conversation some time after the run she learned that the Finnish government shut down this second dog garden. This is a confusing event because though the Finns require a contract, a license, a series of papers, a signature, and a formal dinner party with a special dance in order to say, get permission to use a new type of scanner, to have a dog garden is unquestionable. This is lucky for the neighbors of all dog gardens of Finland. The owner was arrested and the dogs taken away. One neighborhood is free from dog symphony, but not ours.

Mysterious as it may be, it is also clear that the clever and evil owners of the dogs know eachother, they are friends. They know all the other dog garden owners in South Savo, and they know what they are doing to these wonderful quiet neighborhoods. This much is clear. I am not allowed to say anything else about this.