Neighbors

I have great neighbors. When we were attacked by that large spider, they offered to help. When I want to chat about NASCAR, they lend an ear. When one of the dogs breaks a fence post, they come over and fix it. When they get cool toys, they share. And they have helped me work on my car.

A few days ago, the woman that lives next door, came over. She showed RM#1 an envelope that contained a copy of the animal barking annoyance laws. No note. No signature. No return address on the envelope. Nothing. Just an anonymous printout. Chicken.

    

For the record, Neighbor Woman has a couple of dogs that bark aaaaaaaaaalllllllllllllll night long. And they try to fence fight with our dogs. It’s soooo annoying.

Anyway, the woman insisted that the letter was incorrectly addressed and was intended for us. RM#1 laughed. RM#1 is not a confrontational person. She doesn’t like to argue. At times, she doesn’t even defend her opinion about something she knows to be true because she just doesn’t want that kind of disagreement. A bit different than I.

Here’s the thing. We have seven dogs. We know. It doesn’t look good. Two of the seven are taken with RM#1 every single day to work. That leaves five (two that are left inside, and three outside). The dogs bark when another dog is walked past the house. It’s like their way of saying, Keep walking, Dog! The dogs also bark when Neighbor Woman’s dogs try to fence fight. It’s a battle we will continue to fight. They do not bark any other time. They are trained when to bark and when not to. They don’t just stand around and bark for no reason. At night, all seven dogs sleep inside the house. Most of them sleep in the bedroom with RM#1 and RM#2 (all on dog beds around the room). The rest sleep in the living room. They do not bark throughout the night like Neighbor Woman’s dogs do. They sleep. Like the rest of our neighborhood tries to do.

I’m sure if our dogs were causing the problem, we would have received a letter. At least I have to assume we would have. And we didn’t.

Sometimes, living in the city isn’t fun. Especially when you have a zoo like we do. At least nobody is complaining about the three birds we have.

Yet.