Monday, December 03, 2007

Calmness Descends Over the Land

As anyone who will listen to Dena and I know, we have an asshole neighbor with from anywhere from 2 to 4 Labradors who he let's run off leash and crap and play all over my lawn. He used to live 2 doors down and occasionally the dogs would leave nice big dumps all over our lawn and often he would throw their Kong's and Frisbees from his lawn over to ours. This of course did nothing to improve my grass nor did it allow me to keep the flowers alive under my palm tree. Usually it just pissed me off immensely. About a year ago he bought the house between us, to our dismay and 2 weeks ago he moved into it, selling the other.

Now, on a daily basis the dogs come outside, walk straight over to my lawn, piss and shit all over it and then go back inside. Normally he picks it up (sometimes right then, sometimes 24 hours later) but this leaves "shit scrapes" all over the lawn. Also, one dog has bad diarrhea so he misses most of that. So for 2 weeks, my lawn has smelled like shit. In early October my sister and her husband Ian were here visiting, Ian, witnessing the Frisbee affair with 3 labs running and tearing up my lawn he offered to go over and talk to the guy. Now Ian is a great guy, diplomatic and a true salesman and in hindsight I should have taken him up on it. But I didn't.

Throwing the shit in the guys lawn hasn't phased him and I'm not really the sort to put it in a paper bag, light it on fire and well, you know the story. That's just silly. And frankly, I just haven't been able to walk up to him and tell him to keep his dogs off my lawn. I guess I feel that nothing will change and that I probably couldn't keep my temper. So this weekend, Dena and I put a 3' high wire fence around the front yard. It's actually not too bad, only cost $ 100 and took about an hour to install. This morning, I'm proud to report that the 4 labs shit on their own lawn. I woke up to this news and I feel calm and happy. Amazing what $100 and a little passive aggressive behaviour will do for you.

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