Dogpile

Drying myself off after a shower, I am absent-mindedly looking out the window, when I see a dog come into view, and 'assume the position' : arched back and all, it's doggy poop time! It drops a nice one on the vacant lot adjacent to the street, and I change my vantage point to look for the owner (to see if they're waiting with bag a-ready) - and I see it's my neighbour, an attractive but bitchy woman who lives next door. Immediately I calculate the odds of her picking up the poop, and believe me it's a long shot. Still, I can only hope for the best. She's playing ball-fetch with her 2 dogs, and what do I see, she's walking over to the steaming pile ! (Insert 'to the tune of Pretty Woman by Roy Orbison'). She reaches down and.... picks up the ball and throws it out to the dog. Totally ignores the poop mess !

Now let's go back in time to last summer. I have exchanged cursory hello's with the neighbour, and she seems pleasant enough. However an event happens which is soon to disrupt all that : she gets another dog. No big woop, until she leaves the house, and if it has been left outside, it barks continuously. And I mean non-stop loud barking. Since I'm not home that much, it takes me a while to make the connection, in fact I think it was some Saturday morning while I was enjoying my coffee and wasting time on the internet. What the frark is that racket ? I walk outside, and see the unfamiliar white dog over the fence, yapping its brains out. Except perhaps I should qualify 'yapping' since it is a rather large dog, and the sound volume of the bark is quite intense.

If I recall correctly, this happens a few more times, and then one day when I see the owner return to the bark zone, I wander over there, ring the doorbell, and politely ask what's up with all the noise ? She explains that she had no idea what the dog was doing when she was gone, which is somewhat plausible, and promises to buy it a barking collar device. She is very nice about it, and I put it down to an innocent mistake. Of course a more observant person, who was actually grounded in reality and had some sense of the impact on the world of their actions, might have known this already, and obviously would have nipped the problem in the bud before it became, well, a problem. Unless they were some sort of sociopath, which is always a possibility.

Time goes on, and a couple of months later the barking resumes. I go over there again, and listen to the excuse : "Oh, I thought he had stopped that, so I removed the barking collar". Again she is nice (or feigns it very well), promises to take care of the situation, and in I think it did get better after that. However, my opinion of her degraded from that point on.

More fast-forwarding, to last November or something, and it happens again. This time I write a note saying I will call the police the next time I hear the dog barking, and paste it on her front door. Well, can't say I've heard the dog bark since, although I wouldn't be surprised if it did.

So back to the present, and you can see why I had very little faith in neighbor-lady picking up the poop. She obviously falls into the 'irresponsible pet owner' category, and I doubt I can reform her with my occasional visits that call attention to her neglectful ways.

I see her boyfriend - cigar-smoking nice guy talked to him a few times - come into view, and with impeccable timing, white-dog goes back to the same spot and pinches out another loaf. You guessed it, neither lady nor lover-boy even notice. Sigh....