Of the people I have met in my life I have never met two who needed a dog less than my next door neighbors. Three years ago they “adopted” a Cocker Spaniel puppy. I say “adopted” because what happened is that the man’s adult daughter got this puppy, couldn’t train it, and foisted it off onto her step-mother, who is known for “rescuing” dogs. The quotation marks may seem twee but based on how these people treat this dog, they’re required.
Cocker spaniels aren’t exactly known for their even temperaments. Like a lot of small breed dogs, they’re nervous and yappy, and they’re particularly nervous and yappy when they aren’t properly socialized.
My neighbors both spend a horrible amount of time out of the house. They both travel for work which is fine. The problem is when she travels for work, which she does for 5-7 days at a time every six weeks.
He can’t stand to have the dog in the house. So when his wife goes out of town he leaves the dog outside for days at a time – yes, she does have shade and adequate water; at least he does that right – letting her in only briefly to feed her and never bothering to clean up the poo from the yard which is especially pleasant during Washington’s typical summer weather of 90+degF and 90% humidity.
And this dog barks, and barks, and barks, and barks. She barks at cars. She barks at people walking through the alley next to their house. She barks at people across the alley who are using their backyard. She barks when the wind blows or when a squirrel runs across our yard.
It’s really not her fault she barks. For one thing, it’s all she can say: she’s a dog. It’s also not her fault that her people don’t understand that dogs are a pack animal and without another dog around they are her pack. None of that alleviates the annoyance of having a barking dog as a constant companion for a week.
I’ve talked to the woman in the couple about him leaving the dog out. I’ve even gone next door when he’s been home and the dog has been barking for an hour or more at a time. It gets better for a while but there’s no real change in either their behavior or in the dog’s. She still barks constantly and my deck and back yard rapidly become unusable because of the flies attracted to the poo. There isn’t really much more I can do. Except, today delivered to me an opportunity for minor revenge.
The letter carriers at our local post office are notoriously inept. It was so bad last year that my block regularly met in the middle of the street to exchange misdelivered mail and we were routinely getting other people’s outgoing mail with our incoming letters. In today’s mail I got both of my neighbor’s Blockbuster Video rentals.
I’m so tempted to open them to see if they’re anything I want to watch. Even if they aren’t something I want to watch, I’m tempted to open them and use the prepaid envelopes to send them back just for the sheer inconvenience factor.
I still haven’t figured out what I’m going to do but hey, whatever it is it won’t be worse than a dog that barks for four hours straight on a nice Saturday night when I have all my windows open. It can’t be any worse than the dog barking right now as I write this.
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