I have a question for you...
As you know, we got our little puppy last summer, and she is almost a year old now. We want to put up a fence so badly because she LOVES running around and being outside. She's a mini herding dog. We had to settle for a long tie-out leash instead, because we can't trust her to not leave the yard. (She ran half way down the block chasing a car the other day...)
I had her on her leash out in the yard yesterday because the weather was nice. We were just sitting on a blanket in the front yard, waiting for Chad to get home. Chad pulled up, and about the same time, a neighbor's dog comes running into the yard. Chad let Lady and this other dog smell each other, but the hair on Lady's back was standing straight up, so it wasn't a friendly encounter. Or at least Lady was threatened. So we tried to chase the dog off, but it wouldn't go. This is the same dog that has been in our yard several times before. Several times it has been right up on our front step, clawing at our front door. Several times it has run inside our house when we try to get out to shoo it off our property. This dog is probably about Lady's age, but is a much bigger breed, and is the kind of dog that would destroy your house. So we have not been happy with it.
But yesterday it runs into the yard and terrorizes Lady who's on a leash, outside with me. I don't know what would have happened if I wasn't outside. I grabbed Lady and took her in the house, and I honestly thought she was going to have a heart attack. She was barking and whining and making awful noises like she was dying. She was loud. Chad spent about 10 minutes chasing the other dog off. He eventually had to go to the person's front door (she's a few years younger than me) and tell her that her dog was out in our yard, and it's tried to get in our house a couple of times, and apparently he was pretty blunt about it.* (I would be too if I had to spend 10 minutes after I just got home from work chasing someone else's stupid dog around.)
* We had to say something a few weeks ago when the dog was on our front step scratching up our front door, and trying to get in our house right after Lady was spayed and could have hurt herself going crazy over this other dog. The response we got then was that the dog had broken off of it's leash twice that week. Okay, fine.
Her response this time was apparently an eye roll as if to say "Again?" and an "Oh - yeah, I thought I heard something..." But this time the dog didn't break off it's leash - she just lets it out and thinks it will stay in their (unfenced) yard. Then about 1o minutes later you hear her open the door "Honeeey? Honnneeey?"
This is the same dog we had to go canvas the neighborhood to find when it was a puppy because it wandered off. So this makes 7 or 8 times that it's been out running around the neighborhood that we know of.
So - we don't know what to do. We don't want to be the mean neighbors, but they should keep their dog on a leash when they let it out. What if I had had a baby on that blanket out on my front lawn? And here comes this giant bumbling dog.
Chad has now spoken to them twice. If it hurts my dog who is in my yard on a leash, wouldn't they have to pay for that?
Granted, theirs is not the only dog who regularly gets out and roams the neighborhood. A neighbor down the street has two little dust mop dogs that are frequently pooping in our yard, and the other day there was a little gray terrier I had never even seen before sniffing around on our porch. Last summer before we got Lady there was a bull mastiff in the yard.
(I don't know if you know just how big those dogs are - but here's a picture)
And maybe their owners would say "Oh, they would never hurt anyone or another dog" But how do I know that? When they come charging into my yard, or when they're big enough to put a saddle on, I'm going to be concerned. I watched a dog at puppy training class attack another dog while we were all standing around. The trainer got there in a split second and there was no physical harm done, but still. Dogs are still unpredictable. Big dogs even more so. And if you can't control it even when you DO have it on a leash, there's a problem.
I don't want them to have their dog taken away, and I don't even want them to get rid of it - but is it too much to ask to put it on a leash or in a cage?!
And there are cats ALL OVER the neighborhood. But that's a different story.
SO. What do we do? (There's a post on Craigslist today from our town advertising a very similar-sounding dog for sale - I'm suspicious that it's the same dog....)
3 comments:
Does Ammon even have a leash law? You've moved away from the regulated East where we require people to keep their dogs from bothering others. Other places seem to take a more laissez faire attitude and you're just supposed to accept that dogs will charge you while you're out walking and poop in your yard. I quickly discovered that you can't go for a walk in Arkansas if you're afraid of roaming dogs.
You could take the uninvited dog to the pound. Maybe it would get its owner's attention if they had to pay to get it back or they might just leave it there. I don't know how you deal with neighbor's who won't respond to your reasonable concerns. We asked our neighbor to fence their in-ground pool when you were two. They told Dad it was our problem to keep you from drowning in their pool. So we had to pay to put up our own fence because we preferred you not drown (even though by law they were required to fence their pool).
You could get a monster water-gun, that wouldn't hurt the dog but might discourage it from coming toward you.
There shouldn't be an apostrophe in "neighbor's" in the previous comment.
We have leash laws...both of my neighborhood friends with dogs have had the police called on them because their dogs were off leash (and it was an accident and only for about 2 minutes). Also, I once watched a small claims case in Orem where a dog came into someone's yard and was ahem..trying to mate with this someone's dog. And the yard owner shot the other dog and injured it badly. The other owner wanted the dog's medical bills paid but that owner lost because "the dog should have been on a leash." So there you go. I, however, was a little concerned that the judge never even mentioned any problem with discharging a firearm in the middle of a residential neighborhood.
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