Caught Red-Handed (Snouted?)

Una and I have taken to sleeping with the doors open - that is, there are doors in our room that open onto a very small terrace, and because we've been on the verge of heatstroke lately, we do whatever it takes to encourage even the tiniest breeze as we settle in to catch some ZZZs each night (what, you thought there would be AC?). The problem with the open door (and it probably wouldn't matter much if we closed the stinkin' thing either) is that all of the sounds of the streets below and apartments beside us drift in without regard for our beauty sleep.

I've been trying to sleep with earplugs in and sometimes my iPod on, but there is one noise that breaks through seemingly any barrier I attempt to put up. That noise comes from this little guy or grrrl:

Can't you just see the guilt in his/her eyes? His/her posture? He/she was fully aware that I was snapping this photo of the booming bark in action, and so the he/she turned away in shame!

This dalmation lives across the street and below us (hence the bad angle on the photo), and the owner seems to leave it outside throughout most of the day. This isn't necessarily bad dog-owning practice in Rome - plenty of animals are more of the "outside" than "inside" variety. We've taken to calling the pup 'Vega Due,' after the ill-fated animale domestico in Tim Parks' Italian Neighbors.* The clear difference between our Vega and the original - this dog will continue to bark all day long, long after we've departed Rome.

*Parks, Tim. Italian Neighbors. New York: Grove Press, 1992.