You talkin' to me?

Buster’s bulging eyeballs glistened like black marbles as he dangled a foot above the pavement. His crooked teeth were clamped on a tattered red leash, which he shook violently while emitting alien-like growls; his muscular legs flailed like those of an upended tortoise.
My neighbor bent forward and slapped his knee with a hand while pointing at us with the other, his face lined by uncontrolled laughter. 
A couple and their child rode by the house on bicycles prompting the other one, tiny black Bitsey, to race to the end of her leash and deliver a barrage of high-pitched yelps measuring somewhere at the upper end of the range of sound.
The startled girl wobbled on her bike, nearly crashing. Her father fired an annoyed glance at me just as my Boston terrier released his toothy grip and dropped to the ground to investigate the nature of Bitsey’s shrieks.
Before I could pull a modified short-handled fly swat from my belt, Buster ran to the end of his leash and added a blast of barks mercifully muted by his genetically smashed face.
I swatted the driveway hard, which distracted the two from their hubbub, for the moment. Buster turned to me, stub of tail wagging as floppy black lips stretched around crooked white pearls forming a “Joker” smile.
“Who me?” queried his body language
At some point slapping inanimate objects with a fly swat became the preferred method for implementing behavioral corrections, since nothing else worked.
A version of this event occurs near our home about five times a week as my wife and I take Buster, our Boston terrier, and Bitsey, HER tiny Chiweenie (half dachshund, half Chihuahua), for a walk.
Our dogs have gained quite a reputation around the ‘hood and even though they are leashed during such adventures such strolls are seldom a “walk in the park.”
A couple years ago we traveled coast-to-coast in our RV motor home. The dogs were faithful companions, Buster breathing in my ear for thousands of collective miles from a jump seat behind me. However chaos often ensued after hooking up at unsuspecting RV Parks.
At one Park on the Mojave Desert in Needles, California, a fashionable A-class motor home worth about a million dollars parked close to us. Too close.
One evening a woman emerged from the sleek vessel and headed toward the desert’s edge to walk her giant poodle and possibly to contemplate life while standing in the orange sheen of a majestic Mojave sunset. 
The two were about 60 yards away near the park office when I exited our 31-foot C-class vehicle to walk Buster and Bitsey.
Buster spotted the giant poodle first and broke free.  I tossed the other leash and sprinted after Buster with all the dignity of an un-exercised man pushing 60.  About half way to them Bitsey passed me, her two-and-a-half- inch legs blurred by speed.
I caught up, spent, as the large poodle wound its leash around the startled woman’s legs, hobbling her. The Chaweenie yipped triumphphant as Buster nipped at the terrified poodle, letting fly alien bulldog growls as he charged.
Fortunately Buster doesn’t bite people, or even dogs; he only frightens, disrupts and, at the very least, greatly annoys both species.  I clumsily helped to untangle the woman while mumbling humble apologies before absentmindedly shaking the short-handled fly swat at my dogs, which further traumatized the stylish poodle.
Fast forward: last Halloween, around dusk. We were watching a dog-obedience reality show during which other folks with equally dysfunctional animals received help from an “expert.” Amazingly, a dog weighing over a hundred pounds was transformed from threatening wolf-like beast to adorable porch hound with a “clicker" device.
The owner was told to repeatedly click several times and serve her disruptive mutt a treat.
The animal quickly learned to associate the clicks with treats. In a park later that day the canine version of Frankenstein was video-taped once again exhibiting bad behavior, like threatening to disembowel another dog with his teeth.  The owner clicked.  The snarling wolf morphed into a famished lamb, but not before I noticed a flicker in the obviously edited film.
I told my wife they switched dogs - she rolled her eyes.
From a leather couch arm, Bitsey spotted people walking down a street across from a pond that borders our back yard about two hundred yards away.
The eight-pound pedigree mutt perked her pointy ears and followed up with a machine-gun burst of piercing yips.
The glass in our back windows vibrated, distorting the soft reflection of a nearby lamp.
Buster joined in with a series of barks that morphed into muffled howls.
My wife went to the kitchen to get the dogs a treat, like that would help.
I leaned forward and slapped the fly swat flat against a leather ottoman and exchanged glares with our miscreant pets.
Bitsey ignored me and trotted toward the kitchen for a treat. Buster laid his head down in his doggie-bed across the room and snorted a sigh.
I rolled my eyes and changed the channel.