[Dailydrool] Dogs in neighbor's yards

[Elizabeth Lindsey]

Yesterday I had lunch with a friend who lives in a suburb in which  
few people have fenced-in backyards. One of her neighbors has two  
boxers whose family several weeks ago started leaving them tied out  
all the time. The boxers did a lot of barking and at one point got  
loose and ran all over the neighborhood. Even though boxers are  
usually sweet-tempered dogs, they look scary and mean. When they  
showed up at another neighbor's back door and barked at her, she was  
afraid to leave the house.

My friend and the neighbor who was trapped in her house by these dogs  
wrote letters to the homeowner's association to report the dogs and  
their family. The homeowner's association duly sent a warning letter  
to the boxers' house. Several days later, the boxer's owner was on my  
friend's doorstep with the letter in her hand. Uh-oh.

But this woman did everything right. She said she'd gotten a letter  
and she didn't know who had complained, but she was going to all her  
near neighbors to apologize for her boxers' behavior. She'd been  
traveling out of town for work during those two weeks in question and  
had entrusted the care of the dogs to her three teenagers and  
husband, who had provided "care" by leaving the dogs tied up outside  
all day and not playing with or exercising them. She was going to  
have to go out of town again, but she was going to take one of the  
boxers with her and leave the other one with a friend in another  
neighborhood.

I was so impressed by the way this woman handled it. She could have  
gone ballistic on my friend's doorstep, but instead she apologized,  
explained the situation, and gave assurances that she was working on  
solutions to the problem.

It struck me that several Drool posts in the past have suggested  
talking to a neighbor with a problem dog because the neighbor may be  
completely unaware of there's a problem. In this case, the woman had  
been out of town and had no clue that her husband and children  
weren't taking care of the dogs. Of course, with some neighbors you  
just know that it's better not to communicate with them directly and  
to work with law enforcement officials instead. But with others,  
well, this experience proves that it may be good to try to work  
things out with the neighbor directly first.

Elizabeth