Rebellious Thoughts of a Woman

Taking a break from me for a bit, I’d like to tell you about my neighbors and their dogs. We have lived drive to drive at the end of a four-house street for about six years, with a four month hiatus when they tried to sell their house (and they rented it to a family of home-schoolers in one of the best school districts in the country who let their guests park their cars on my lawn), to no avail. (I guess that is a sign of how bad things are: the husband is a real estate agent and he couldn’t sell his own home.) Anyway, onto discussing the three dogs that they have called theirs. 

When they first moved in they had an old lab and a young German shepherd, Sam. After the old dog wandered off a few times, they decided to get an electric fence. For some reason they only bought one collar. One would think that they would put it on the young German shepherd, and they did, for a while. But after the old dog wandered off again, they decided to put it on the old dog so that it wouldn’t wander off into the woods that run alongside our houses and just lie down and die. I guess the electric fence company was resisting selling them another dog collar.

So the old dog lived outside and in the garage. He had apparently become stinky in his old age. The young dog was at home, until they discovered that their youngest child was allergic to dogs. At that point he, too, barked the garage home. Responsibility for the dogs rested mainly on their somewhat mentally-challenged 10-year-old son.

One day as I was weeding (in the days when I cared enough to stop, unlike today when I care enough to notice, but not enough to bend down to pull), Sam wandered over and started sniffing me. Now, as someone who has grown-up in a petless home and with a dog-fearing mother I can safely say that the dog fears have been transmitted in my DNA. My dog, a Maltese, is just too small and too cute that he passes under all dog-fearing radars. Not so with Sam. I yelled. And the son came and got him, because the dog was not going back to the garage on his own.

Around this time the old dog did manage to crawl off and die. Perhaps they buried the collar with him, because it did not go on Sam.

By this time we feared going outside. Sam would be forever getting off his leash (I guess they didn’t realize that you need to hold the leash and not just put it on the dog) or go beyond the range of where he was supposed to stay on his own volition. He would be sniffing visitors, or causing visitors to stay in their cars. As my ex-mother-in-law commented, "isn’t that the Nazi dog" (German shepherds)? And that is the way he started making things feel down here at the end of the street.

That is until one morning at around five-thirty when Poops and I were walking up our street to get the newspaper. It was fall, it was dark, it was chilly. We were in our own little world: Poops was doing his smelling-peeing routine, and I was thinking about how clear the sky is, so I didn’t see Sam running up the street until he was right next to me, or rather Poops, who he was clearly more interested in. I screamed. “Get this dog!” And out of the darkness I could see the son running towards us.

“His leash slipped out of my hand” he stammered.

I was too shaken up to comment. Poops almost had a heart attack; he’s not overly fond of big black dogs since a few months prior he had been “greeted” so enthusiastically by a Rottweiler that was wandering freely around the neighborhood that a toe was broken and he needed to be in a little dog cast.

A week later a new home was found for Sam with someone who had experience training German shepherds.

Then came Walter, some kind of non-allergenic dog. No electric fences for him. Only a boy and his dog and a leash. Needless to say boy was constantly running around the neighborhood looking for his missing dog. When they moved back from their four-month hiatus it was without Walter.

I thought, good, they know that they can’t take care of a dog. But no, this morning I saw those orange electric dog-fence flags around their yard. Walter was back. Maybe this time they will figure out how to train him.

My only overt comment on my neighbors and their dog-caring abilities: if this is how they care for their dogs, I wonder what they’re doing with their children? And if one son riding his tricycle into my garage door is any evidence, I see no difference.

Back to me: Let’s all visualize a SOLD sign for my house!

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