We are lucky enough to live in an area surrounded by quite a few nice neighbors. They are all respectable dog owning, fence or leash using, fabulous people. However, there always seems to be one person in every neighborhood who either 1. Has a dog that barks all night every night or 2. Has a dog that is allowed to roam the neighborhood, thus depositing poo in every yard but it's own.
Case in point:
My husband and I have been together for 8 years. When we first decided to move in together, we rented a house from a coworker of mine that was perfect for us. (yes we lived in sin, big no-no in the bible belt where we live!) The house was perfect, that is, as long as you weren't a big sleeper when the sun went down. Our fence backed up to a fence where apparently a vampire dog lived. Vampire in the sense where he would sleep all day and stay up all night barking. We tried everything we could think of to shut the damn thing up, short of rat poison in a steak. I won't tell you what other things went through my mind as I lay in bed at midnight listening to the nonstop barking. We tried peanut butter filled bread, hoping to keep the four legged idiot quiet so I could at least fall asleep (my husband has never had a problem falling asleep, regardless if a dog is barking or a helicopter is landing on our roof). We tried putting literature about why dogs bark relentlessly at night (they're usually just bored; imagine that!) in the offending neighbors' mailbox. And last of all, we tried a screaming match at each other over our fences, threatening to call the cops for disturbing the peace (which we just couldn't bring ourselves to do). Finally, we had to move. We had originally been planning to buy this house, but the dog totally squished that idea.
So, after we got married, we started the house search. On the list of wants was a nice house in a quiet neighborhood. It didn't take long to find the perfect house in what seemed like a really nice, upcoming neighborhood. The first night there was a dream. Silence! No doggie solos to keep me up all night. I woke up the next morning totally in love with the house and neighborhood. That was the one and only night that would happen. The next night, the house directly across from us became the proud owner of an all night lab. So we were back to square one. This dog didn't bark all night, rather he would pick and choose certain times that he found best to interrupt my sleep. There were some nights I got to sleep and some nights I didn't. The kicker was, we also had a house at the end of the cul de sac that owned 2 labs that apparently paid the taxes for everyone because they got to poo in everyone's yard. Strange thing was, I still got a tax bill. It was really nice when said owner of tax paying labs would let his dogs out at 4 a.m. so they could stand directly under our bedroom window and bark until my husband had to get up and chase them out of our yard ... while avoiding their poo of course. So after a couple of screaming matches with those neighbors and two years of land mines in our yard, we got pregnant and decided to move again.
The next move, (and our present house today) was a fabulous choice for about 1 year. Then, the Twat, as we so lovingly refer to her, moved into the house directly across from us with her 1 cat and 2 annoyingly yappy, furry, small dogs. She has a nice 6 foot privacy fence that she chooses to ignore while she opens her front door and sends her menagerie out into the world alone and directly into our front yard. Being the seasoned poo yard neighbors that we are, we immediately chased one out of the middle of the road, narrowly avoiding being hit by a speeding car, and walked up to her to tell her that her dog was almost smooshed into a hairy stain on the asphalt. Her response? She calmly ushered her dog into the house and slammed the door in my face. Not to be outdone in the maturity game, I flung her dogs' poo that was so kindly left in my yard into her yard, up onto her front porch. I have since done this 5 more times because it makes me feel so damn good! So now there have been precisely 2 screaming matches between the Twat and my husband, as well as between her and a few other neighbors.
In closing, and thank you to anyone who has read this entire post, I would just like to ask ... is it horrible for me to not want dog poo in my yard when it doesn't belong to me? Is it so wrong for me to want the owner of the dog to remove said poo from my yard when it doesn't belong to me? And am I stupid for wondering why someone would let their defenseless animals roam into a street that is a major cut thru for Walmart ( you know how busy that makes a road!)?
Thank you. Rant over.
