Reminds me of a short book I like that talks about these sort of tings titled "An Engineer's Guide to Solving Problems." It starts with a similar situation - "The Dog Barks When the Phone Rings." Eventually, you get to a section called “If I Could See it, I Could Fix it!” which discusses the importance of understanding the problem before attempting fixes.
Went to a friend's house years ago, and knocked on the front door. Loud running, then BOOM door moves as dog jumps up onto other side. After some finagling, my friend finally gets the door open and says "Use the doorbell next time, he hasn't figured it out"
Let me guess, the dog is chained to a metal post, the metal post happened to splice the telephone line buried in the garden, and the dog was getting 100V of ring voltage every time.
