Saturday, May 10, 2008

I hate people...

Well, not all people. Just a select few.

My neighbor is putting up a privacy fence between our houses. Unfortunately he took down his chain link fence, but has not yet been able to fully finish the 6 foot wooden fence. Normally this wouldn't be a huge deal except for the fact that they have 3 dogs. The dogs are typically unsupervised and run the fence line while barking at us non-stop. Now that the fence is temporarily gone, the dogs are running into my yard and craping all over the place....unsupervised of course.

I too have a dog. She is a high-strung, high-anxiety, super sweet little gal that I adopted from Angel's Wish about five years ago. I've done a lot of training to help with her problems (I should mention that besides my mediocre cycling escapades and working as a research assistant in a pharmaceutical laboratory, I also help teach family dog training classes in the evenings at one of the quality local science-based, positive reinforcement based training facilities). Pepper was seriously bitten by another dog a few months ago. It was so serious that she almost lost her eye. Pep is very scared around other dogs and really wants nothing to do with them now.....and understandably so.

I awoke this morning to my dog panting and pacing around the house. I looked out my patio door to see another dog looking in.....and two other dogs crapping on my lawn. WTF. So I spent part of the morning cleaning up all the dog shit in my backyard. A few hours later I was outside with my dog when all hell broke loose. My neighbor's wife let the dogs out of the house and they totally bum rushed my dog. Once we got the dogs untangled I asked her to keep her dogs in their yard. I also mentioned that they were in my yard earlier in the day and I didn't want her dogs greeting my dog because she had recently been attacked. Her dogs were also left unsupervised the night before. I had to rush my dog out to the bathroom before they saw us and then rush back inside my house. She said she was sorry, that the fence would be put up soon and that her dogs were nice. I said that's great, but I don't want them in my yard greeting my dog.

Minutes later her husband came out and verbally attacked me. He told me not to talk to his wife that fucking way and that we have to be fucking neighbors, so act like one. Needless to say we got in a pretty heated argument where many f-bombs were dropped (by both sides). The argument ended up with him walking away from me mid-sentence. (Mind you that this is the same neighbor who weeks before told us that he was putting up a fence and that we wouldn't have to move our fence. Days later, without telling us, he unhitched our fence at the corner post and left it wide open for anything to come into our yard. Call me crazy, but having a hole in my fence is something I'd like to know about before I step outside at midnight my dog. We live right next to the marsh and it is not uncommon to have dogs, cats, coyotes, raccoons, deer etc. roaming around our neighborhood. Not to mention the fact that you can't detach a fence from the corner post. It could have buckled the whole damn thing. My husband was very cool about it and explained this to him.)

People baffle me. Common sense and courtesy are a thing of the past apparently. It doesn't matter if I'm outside with a social dog, an anxious dog, a two year old child or grandparents. I have the right to not have three strange dogs run repeatedly onto my property to interact with us. I've absolutely had it with piss poor dogs owners and shitty neighbors. If my intolerance to this rudeness makes me a bad neighbor, then count me in. Next time this happens I'll just call animal control. The going rate for "dogs running at large" is $200 per dog. Each pile of crap will run you about $100.

Ok. Rant over.

I went to the doctor this week and it's not looking good for me. My wrist is swollen and they don't know why. This isn't normal. I have to take a week off from cycling and mountain biking is currently on the back burner. I've had an x-ray taken and a battery of tests but no answers. My doctor is treating me for RSD and I'll shortly be heading to a OT wrist specialist. If this doesn't get better in the next few weeks, then I'll be seeing a specialist. Wrist surgery is something to avoid, but that might be the direction I'm heading.

5 comments:

Walter Mitty said...

Buy lots of pepper spray. Save some for your neighbor.

Unknown said...

sorry about your crappy neighbors. that sucks. even if i were your neighbor and thought you were being obnoxious (even tho i don't think you are in the slightest, i would apologize and keep my dogs leashed until the fence was up). i mean wtf? who do they think they are?
and really sorry about your wrist. i was having issues with my back- still am kinda and the thought of not mountain biking had me hyperventilating. as far as surgery (obviously there are risks to all surgeries) but what is the risk?

madisongrrl said...

I didn't think I was out of line with his wife at all. Now the exchange between the husband and myself was ridiculous. But he brought the noise so I just returned the favor. Generally not my personality at all...but if they can't respect the fact that my dog is uncomfortable around other dogs, then fuck them. I would never, ever let my animals run loose in anyones yard.

madisongrrl said...

As far as not being able to mountain bike it makes me sick to my stomach. Wrist surgery would require that they figure out what's wrong with my wrist. The wrist is very complicated thing to operate on. Some people end up worse off after surgery depending on scar tissue or nerve healing issues. I think i just need to quit googling all this shit because it's starting to work me up.

Unknown said...

not to laugh, but yeah, sometimes google can do that. my daughter zoe while i was pregnant with her had these cysts on her brain that were seen during an u/s. so of course i googled it. the horrible possibilities were so horrible! she's obviously perfectly healthy, but sometimes i'd rather be ignorant- especially in that instance.