Things They Really Need to Market: Bark-Cancelling Dogphones

The Bose noise-cancelling headphones are incredible. There aren't that many products anywhere that work as well for what they were intended as the 'phones. You can listen to music in very noisy environments and you can even use them as dedicated hearing protection, The technology seems like pure magic but it's super-straightforward and easy to understand. It's been around in theory at least for a very long time, and I think it's quite possible that the actual working technology may have been around for millennia, but don't quote me on that. You probably don't want to be called crazy too.
 Sounds, and everything else in the Universe for that matter, are made of certain frequencies. A frequency is basically a wave, and can be illustrated by a simple line-drawing of an ocean wave. If two waves of equal amplitude (basically height/strength) meet head-on in the ocean, several things can happen, but we'll only concentrate on two of them. If the waves meet when both are at the height of their peak, for an instant the waves will reinforce each other and make one really big wave before passing through each other and continuing off in opposite directions. But if two waves meet when one is in the middle of the peak and one is in the middle of the trough, for a moment they cancel each other out and the water briefly becomes level and still.
 The Bose system is based on that. It samples (records) the ambient noise within hearing of the user at so many times per second; analyzes it and then creates a frequency or frequencies that's a mirror-image of the original waveform, and sends it to the earpieces. It cancels out whatever sound(s) it is just like the opposite waves meeting in the ocean. Apparently you can stand next to a jackhammer and hear silence. The beauty is that you can add music. The software knows not to mess with that signal, so you can be on a busy street corner and still hear the pianissimo parts in a symphony. Pretty bitchin' tech going on.
 If there's ever a dog whose bark is worse than his bite it's my dog Bert. He's a Beagle, and Beagles can bark, man. I have a db meter app on my phone and I'm surprised I've never thought to measure the volume, but I do know it's loud as shit. To his credit he rarely barks without being barken to. Every now and then we'll go out for a walk and he comes out with guns blazing; barking his head off at some new dog or a squirrel half a mile away, but usually another dog has to bark first to set him off. When he does bark though, you know it. We usually go the back way late at night in case he comes out like gangbusters, but when we go the normal way we go through a breezeway, and if he barks tn there it sounds like a shotgun or something. Luckily most of the neighbors have dogs too. Still it tightens my sack when he barks late at night. I wish Bose or somebody would look dogward.
 Surely some junior genius could come up with a way to rig a mic, speaker and a microprocessor to a collar and make it work. That would so rock. I could take Mr. B out at 3am and walk right into a Cat Disco or whatever and not even hear a peep. Now that I think about it though, it'd probably be about fucking freaky to see him bark but not hear any sound. It'd be like an episode of the Twilight Bone. I guess that wouldn't be the thing to do. And dang...if it'd freak me out that much, think what it'd do to him. Could you imagine trying to holler at someone to tell them that a car was barreling down on them or something, but you couldn't make any sound? It'd be a nightmare. Same for the dog. No, I couldn't do that to my buddy. I guess it's back to the ol' drawring board. Might as well let the little fucker bark. He is a Beagle after all. Artwork by Kennedy Stewart.