The poem begins with the speaker starting the scene in medias res, which is Latin for “in the middle.” Whatever the speaker was doing in their home has been disrupted by the incessant barking of the neighbor’s dog. That this is annoying to the speaker is in part cued by the dark humor of the title, which implies that the speaker is so annoyed by the dog, they could silence it by shooting it. Another clue to the speaker’s personality is delineated by the title’s notation: It’s “[a]nother [r]eason” the speaker doesn’t “[k]eep [a] [g]un [i]n [t]he [h]ouse” (Title). This indicates the speaker understands that, for various reasons, they are not one who should have a gun in their home. The reason detailed in this poem is that they believe themselves prone to murder when highly annoyed or frustrated. This should be read as tongue-in-cheek; Collins’s poetry is often marked by subtle or ironic humor.

The first two stanzas of the poem set up the emotional reaction the speaker has to the dog as well as the relative proximity between the two in location. The dog’s bark is “high, rhythmic” (Line 2), and the speaker is agitated by the fact that it simply “will not stop barking” (Lines 1 and 5).