Dogs and People on the Internet

I don't have a lot of interaction with flesh and blood people these days. At least not people outside my family. My main window into the world and the current thoughts of people is the discourse on internet forums.

I have two male dogs. Normally I put them on two separate chains in two separate locations. They get into trouble when I let them run together. But last night, after a long romp through the fields, I decided to put them both into the same pen. I was reminded most of the night why I had stopped doing that before.

Their purpose is to bark at danger or trouble and alert me to it. But they will often bark at nothing. Only when they're in the same pen, one will bark (possibly at something real) and then the other will take it as a sign of aggression and they will fall to fighting each other. So I lay there in bed, in the wee hours of the morn, listening to dogs fighting and wondering if the original thing that one of them barked at might possibly be real.

This greatly resembles the internet.