That would be one of the multitude of huge, deep dog prints found in my garden beds this morning. Yes, at least one of the neighbors’ dogs has been over the fence again and stomping through my garden destroying stuff, and it wasn’t a chihuahua.

I am well beyond livid now, and I am tired of waiting for Lin to go “talk to them civilly” as he says we should. No, I will be handling it myself, and no one involved is going to be happy about it. I do my best to not give a damn what my neighbors do. I really don’t care. The only time I care is when what they are doing spills over onto my property, and generally, as long as there is no danger to me or mine and no property damage of any sort (and whatever it is doesn’t happen all the time), I still don’t give a damn. But I do give a damn about large dogs that have been aggressive toward me, have killed a possum (in my yard), and have attempted to claw through my kitchen window screen, and have stomped through my garden destroying things on numerable occasions being in my yard. Yes, I do have a problem with that, especially since I know they know the dogs are doing these things, and one would have to be completely lacking in brain cells to think it wouldn’t upset just about any neighbor.

Oh, so I hear something snuffling at the kitchen window just now and look … the damn dog is in the yard right now!

I’d call animal control right now, which is what I plan to do whenever I see of these dogs in my yard, but I do like to warn people I will be turning them in on a regular basis before actually doing so. I’m trying my best to be nice when what I would really like is be a raging shrew bitch from hell. I think I am entitled to be a raging shrew bitch from hell about this too, because truly, the situation has become completely untenable, and I am seriously not putting up with it anymore.

I’ll be getting together all the photos I have taken of the dogs destruction and the dogs in my yard that I have taken all this time, I will be having them printed at Walgreens, and I will be composing as polite a threatening letter as I am capable of composing informing them that I will be calling animal control whenever one or more of their dogs is in my yard, and if they don’t arrive quickly enough to satisfy me, I will simply be releasing the dog(s) out into the street (which is what Lin did that night the one was trying to get into the kitchen window). These neighbors are excessively lucky I love animals and can’t find it in my heart to blame the poor dumb dogs for their actions, because other people less inclined to not give a damn about dumb destructive dogs would no doubt handle the matter in significantly less ethical ways.^†

It’s a good thing today is bread baking day, because I need to relax, and baking bread is truly one of the most relaxing things I do. I think I will go do that right now.

Don’t know where the dog went. I checked, and it isn’t in my yard or theirs. I guess it jumped the fence at the side of the house and now is out on the street somewhere. None of them are apparently at home, seeing as the cars are all gone, their gate is open, and the yappy chihuahuas are nowhere to be seen.

1. † Though heaven forbid one of these dogs ever manages to kill one of the neighborhood stray cats I am trying to give a better life too, because I am not entirely certain what I would do in that situation. I imagine it would start with me stomping through their yard full of yappy aggressive chihuahuas carrying a dead cat, and then, well, me totally losing my cool in a most unpleasant way. If you’ve never seen me do that, all I can say is … I can make people wish they were dead with only my words. [↩]