A small- to medium-sized dog has a larger environmental footprint than a cow

The neighbour is obviously never there on the weekend, otherwise he would switch it off, right? I realised that he is in absentia, as opposed to lying in a pool of his own blood, and therefore insensible to the havoc his security mechanism is wreaking, after extensive weekly consultations with the equally stunned guard.

After the sustained assault on my tympanum, I want to chew my hand off. I want to howl at the firmament, I want to cry. I want to huddle babbling against the wall like a survivor of a session of Guantanamo Bay water boarding. I want to take a gun and shoot the siren.

But I don't. Because I live in a neighbourhood where sirens are what you sign up for. You get them along with gardens, mammoth walls, unexpected jolts from your electric fence and so-called suburban bliss. All this and dogs.

I often question the validity of dogs. Research has shown that a small- tomedium-sized dog has a larger environmental footprint than a cow. And we all know that cows are really bad for the planet. Never mind dogs' incessant need to communicate.

It must have been "green" thinking that led my friend's neighbours to poison her dogs. We know it was her neighbours because they fed the dogs steak laced with gut-wrenching poison. The vet, who did the autopsy on the dog that succumbed, explained that your garden-variety criminals use sausage for their murderous intent. Neighbours go all upmarket with their crimes.

So we are considering exacting revenge for the poor dog's heinous suffering - it was a brakkie that she had saved from ignominious death, only to have it subsequently tortured and killed. I recommend a faulty siren. I'd like to see them poison that.