Here's what nice neighbors do when they find a dog wandering around the neighborhood and they don't know who it belongs to.
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| Nice neighbors attach the dog to a leash, attach the leash to a tree, and give the dog some water. |
Was he annoying? Yes. Was he causing our dogs to bark? Yes. Was he a nuisance? Yes. Do we have a leash law? Yes.
But nice neighbors understand that dogs (like children) sometimes don't do what they are supposed to do. Even when they have responsible owners (or parents).
So instead of calling animal control (we've seen enough of that officer this week, thank-you-very-much!) we try to find out who the dog belongs to.
In all the years we've done this we only had one owner very angry. She told us that we should have "Just told him to go home!"
But we live near a very, very busy state road and we love animals, so for the animal's safety we chain them on a 15 foot leash (under a tree so he's in the shade) and either wait for someone to see him from the road, or try to find the owner.
We'll call animal control the next time her dog is out, because she specifically told us not to chain her dog again.
What else has happened this week?
Someone opened the gates and fences down at another neighbor's home so that her goats and dogs would all get out--not nice.
Another neighbor opened a gate and let out two dogs, and then called animal control to pick up the loose dogs. Again, not nice!
Last year I would have said that we lived in the nicest neighborhood on the planet!
Something is in the air this spring.
And I wish it would blow away.
6 comments:
Not nice at all. Hope the weekend goes better!
Oh wow!!! Sounds like something is definitely in the air.. Apparently your neighbors need to do the same as you all have had to and lock things up.. Then start patrolling the area..
It's an evil, evil thing to let a dog out and then sic the dogcatcher on him.
I sometimes hesitate to intervene in favor of a stray dog with no tags, but if I can tell who the owner is, of course I'm going to keep the dog safe until I can reunite them. Sheesh. Not even a close call. I get to enjoy the dog for a few hours, and then I can be pretty sure I'm not stuck with him for life. (I have plenty of my own already.)
Really not nice neighbor: poisoning and shooting the dogs who occasionally strayed. Yes, it happened to us. And the dogs were actually on our property at the time they were poisoned and shot.
Thanks for your comments. We've had sooooo many neighbors that have been helpful and supportive.
Hopefully, after all is said and done, this will bring our neighborhood closer together and more like a family. The way neighborhoods should be.
@ Reason, we've occasionally had irresponsible people in our town who don't obey the leash law because they don't want to. Those are the people that need to be dealt with in a not so nice way.
However, I know that occasionally a dog will accidentally get out of a yard, and those are the dogs that we like to return to their owners.
We are still a 'livestock' area, which means if a dog threatens our livestock we are allowed to kill them. We haven't had to do that, we've usually been able to take care of things like that in a neighborly way.
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