Neighborhood Vent

Mom has a padlock on her fence gate. Not to keep us in -- but to keep others out. Long ago, some kids opened Grandma's back gate at her house when they didn't know it and Buster / Josh left the yard. An aunt found them wandering by the river, 10 blocks from home across a busy street. That was enough for Mom & Grandma -- they both lock their gates now.

We're very fortunate that none of the kids in our neighborhood would do that but we do keep a padlock on our gate. It's peace of mind that no one can come in or out of our back yard though.

We use 40 ft. tie outs at our house. Our dogs are indoor dogs, and have 2000 sq feet to play in inside. The tie outs keep the dogs at least 20 feet from the property line on any given side of our yard. Even if I had a fully fenced yard, my dogs would be on tie outs. I live in the inner city. So far in my neighborhood this year, we've had dogs shot, beat to death, antifreeze fed to them through the fence, "kids" throwing rocks at fenced dogs, dogs stolen out of fenced yards for dog fighting, and kids letting them out to run the streets. Needless to say, my dogs will remain on tie outs until such a time that I can create a "secure" fence. I have an area in our north lot identified, but I still have to worry about the older "cat lady" next door who I've caught throwing rocks at my dogs for chasing stray cats out of OUR yard.

Sounds to me like not only should those people NOT have pets, but should NOT have had children either...

There is no shortage of stupid, clueless, difficult, uncaring people. Unfortunately there are no laws that say they can't have pets OR children. We have padlocks on both our gates, and never let the dogs outside when we are not home. You have my deepest sympathy.

My problem in my neighborhood is that there are too many that do not have pets. This means that they played with fireworks for hours at a time and they didn't care about anyone or any pet that may have been scared of the noise.
I don't know why those people thought that everyone enjoyed
the noise. When one family finished another one started up for another hour of noise.
I'm very upset because Daisy is now afraid of thunder. Thunder never bothered her before. We came back home within minutes of starting.

This is our problem too. We have kids that just don't understand that when a dog gets excited he's going to jump on you (even though we're working on this), and that dogs have to go potty outside. It may be gross to them, but that's where dogs do their business.

I had to have words with a child who thought it was fun to light and throw fire crackers while I was riding my horse past his house! Cisco is a very steady horse, but someone throwing fire crackers was a bit traumatic for him. The boy could see I was having problems controling the horse, and he didn't stop. I was SO angry.