If you're a longtime reader of this blog, you may remember a
little incident Opie likes to call
Turtle Gate 2013. If you're new to this blog,
no worries, you can read about it
here or I can sum up it up in a couple of
sentences:
The neighbor kids found a turtle. I freaked out.
In any case, I think poor Opie is longing for the carefree days of Turtle Gate because
this week things with the neighbors took an epic turn for the worse.
Tuesday night the neighbors got a dog.
Which probably doesn't seem that dramatic to most of you. I mean lots of people
get dogs. Opie and I have two dogs. And considering this is Oklahoma some of
you might think I should be relieved that it’s just a dog and not a tiger.
It is interesting to note that my previous comment is not an exaggeration.
Friends of ours who live a little further out in the country have a neighbor
who has a lion.
A LION!
But I digress...
The point here is, our neighbors got a dog.
There are many reasons this is a problem.
First, these are people who can't be trusted to keep a turtle alive.
Second, I have no idea where they're going to stuff a dog into their house. It's
the same size as ours (two or three bedrooms) and it's already occupied by at
least eight people:
The woman who owns the house, her daughter, the daughter's new boyfriend,
four of the daughter's five children, and upon occasion, the oldest
child's little boy.
Seriously, it's a little crowded over there.
Now don't get me wrong, I think it’s great for kids to have pets.
But I also love dogs…so much so, in fact, that Opie is
probably the only thing keeping me from being the subject of a really
horrifying Animal Hoarders episode.
And these are people who are not good with dogs. The kids and their friends
tease our dogs through the chain link fence to the point that before I let
Bubba and Sassy out in our yard, I go out on the porch and do a quick
reconnaissance to make sure the neighbor kids are inside.
And I know some of you are thinking “Well, now that they
have a dog of their own, they’ll learn how to act around dogs.”
This is a great theory but completely unsupported by
history. You see, the neighbors have already had
three other dogs in the last
ten years, all of which they have had to get rid of because the dogs started exhibiting
behavior problems and couldn't be controlled anymore. The last one
attacked one of the girls and bit her in the face.
So, I don’t think this poor 4th dog is going to fare any better. Especially since, in light of their history
of animal control, they made the questionable decision to get a
Bullmastiff.
 |
(This isn't their actual dog, this is what it will look like when it's fully grown.
And I'm not violating copyright, it was labeled for free use on Wikicommons) |
A fact poor Opie became aware of when I stormed in the house screaming “Bullmastiff!”
at the top of my lungs.
And then I spent a really entertaining hour looking up Bullmastiffs on the
internet and yelling out interesting tidbits at random intervals.
“130 pounds! That dog’s going to weigh more than I do!” and “Needs
a firm master who is consistent with the rules!
The only thing that's consist over there is the police presence!”
Not an exaggeration, by the way. The police have been
frequent visitors next door. The last time they came, there were not one, not
two, not even three, four or five, but SIX police cars on the scene.
“Aggressive toward other animals if not properly socialized!”
“Any dog can be aggressive,” Opie pointed out. “It’s all
about the owners.”
“That,” I agreed “is the whole problem: the owners.”
Because I have nothing against Bullmastiffs; they are beautiful dogs and from what I've read, incredibly loyal and usually very sweet. And I'm not against people owning big
dogs. Our Bubba is half Rottweiler and
he’s a sweetheart (unless you're the
Tru-Green guy). One of our neighbors
has a Pit Bull and another has a Doberman. Those dogs are huge yet I still have
no problem with them because they’re clearly WELL-TRAINED.
In any case, you might still think this is none of my
business, but here's why you're wrong. This, my friends, is the neighbors' fence:
They have since stuffed a pink Halloween pumpkin in between the missing boards but that fallen over wagon wouldn’t even keep my six-pound Maltese in the yard.
"We're getting a new fence!" I screamed at Opie.
"We need to replace our chain-link fence with a huge privacy fence that
their untrained monster of a dog won't be able to get over!"
Opie calls this kind of announcement "over-reacting" (although
usually not out loud) so he sighed and said, “They get a dog and we need a new
fence? Why don't we wait to see if there's a problem before you get all worked
up?"
“I'm already worked up!" I told him. “And we need a new fence because you
don't want to be here the day their dog breaks through their piece of shit
excuse for a fence and hurts one of my dogs! You don't want to be here that day
because that's the day I'll be going to PRISON!"
And he allowed as how he thought that, in a physical fight with the mob next
door, I was much more likely to end up in the hospital.
Which just goes to show you that he has no appreciation for my Ninja skills and
cat-like quickness.
“Besides,” I continued. “We don't need to get a privacy fence around the whole
yard, just that side.”
We can't only do the one side,” he said in genuine horror. “It’ll
look like we're just trying to block them.”
“We are just trying to block them. I've wanted to block them since the day I
moved in.”
“It's obnoxious.”
“THEY'RE obnoxious.”
We continued in this vein for awhile but the long and the short of it is, Toby
the Handyman came over yesterday, took some measurements and is going to give
us a bid for a fence—actually he’s giving us two bids: one for a fence between
us and the one side and one for the whole yard because I suspect that Opie is
going to put his foot down on this one.
And as soon as it’s finished, I can stop worrying about my dogs and go back to
worrying about the neighbor kids themselves and worrying about the welfare of
this poor little puppy who is absolutely adorable and deserves a good home.
“Brace yourself,” I told Opie “and start planning because if
they start mistreating that dog we might have to, you know, rescue and re-home
it.”
“We are NOT stealing the neighbors’ dog,” he said.
“Not if they take care of it,” I agreed.
But I'm not going to lie, I'd kind of like to know how much they paid for the dog so I know if I'll be looking at a misdemeanor or a felony.
