Willow has learned to adapt and get used to most of the sounds in and around my house, except…
The doorbell (or even the sound of a doorbell on television) will send her into a tizzy. (She perked up just now as I started to write about a doorbell, and I haven’t said a word out loud.)
My neighbors. I don’t know a good way to say this, but Willow, whom I got from a shelter where they told me that she came from North Carolina, seems to be racist. I live in a mixed-race neighborhood, and my next door neighbor is the nicest man you could hope to have as a neighbor, and black. If Willow so much as hears a peep from that side of the house then she’s off, and worse if she’s outside in the (fenced) back yard and sees him or anyone who visits him. He and I are friendly but not close, so he kind of gives me a cockeyed smile, as if to ask “How are you training her?” but he never says a word about it. Also, in the summer time when the front windows are open more and she can hear people walk down the sidewalk, the black kids get ‘what for’, and everyone else seems to get a pass. It’s a little embarrassing sometimes.
Sometimes when I used to cook (badly) and the ‘supper alarm’ (sold as a ‘smoke alarm’) would go off, that bothered both of us a lot. Fortunately my cooking has improved greatly. Well, that, and I eat a lot more cold turkey sandwiches.
Telephone ringing (since it happens so infrequently) merely startles her, but she’s quiet for that. (If I talk for awhile on the phone then she starts talking, too.) And my sneezes, which used to cow her, don’t bother her so much now. I think that’s because when I used to see her reaction then I’d laugh (at her, for that) and she got used to my sneezing resulting in my laughing, so she got that things were okay after all.