The Every Couple of Days Blog

Dog War

Some people don't like dogs. Some people don't like people. I live next door to a man who hates me and my dog, and the battles of words in the past seven years has escalated to action. I got him, and now he's getting me. I've got to be calm and thoughtful about this, or it's all going to fall down on me, becasue I have a diagnosed mental disability. I am bipolar, see a psychiatrist regularly and take my medications. But when an individual decides to attack me over his petty annoyances, it becomes a matter of the life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness that the Constitution guarantees me as a citizen of the US. Bipolar disorder means that I'm subject to drastic mood swings, and the outbursts that come from me because of it.

I have an 11-year-old German Shepherd who is my protection. She barks when she sees anything. I live alone, and I depend on her as a warning, if not a protection system. My dog cares about me, and loves me the way no service provider such as ADT could. I'm 57, a single female, and I live alone in my house (no human roomates).

Intermitantly, for the past seven years I've been in this house, my next door neighbor has come on my property, annoyed my dog at the fence so that she barks like she's being attacked. His two boys had to be told not to throw rocks at the dog, and not to bang on the fence to make the dog bark. He, they didn't have the common courtesy to teach their dogs to respect animals. I had to initiate it.

People start walking their dogs at 5:30 am in my neighborhood. My dog barks. That's what dogs do. I've told the man that, and it only makes him mad.

One night, the man came to my gate after 11:00 pm, and hasseled my dog into a barking fit that scared her into coming into the house, still barking, and backing up to protect me. I got a flashlight and walked to my front iron gate to find my next door neighbor in his long johns. He was expecting me to have a conversation over the noiise, as my dog was barking louder because I was approaching the danger she sensed.. He kept screaming at me to come to the gate to talk to him. I waved him off, went inside, and my dog settled down quietly for the night because she sensed that the danger had passed.

The man didn't ring my doorbell. He intentionally cornered me, on my property at my gate. He can't sleep through dog barking. I suggested ear plugs, or perhaps putting some sort of white noise in his bedroom to help cover my dog's unusual findings in the dark. I suppose when I make a suggestion it only raises his ire.

I have a doggie door, and the dog comes and goes as she needs. I have made efforts to stop the problem that annoys him most. My gate is next to the bedroom where his two boys of elementary school age sleep. I sleep on the other side of my house, and up to now I've been a deep sleeper. When I hear my dog bark at 5:30 or 6:00 or 6:30, even 6:45, I spring from my bed and call the dog in the house. I understand his situation, but he doesn't understand that I can't and won't stop my dog from alerting me. He laughed at me outright, sarcastically commenting, "That's your protection?"

At the beginning of this summer, the four tires and rims were stolen from my 2008 truck, parked in my front driveway. I was awake that night, and remember watching the dog sleeping soundly in my bedroom with me. A neighbor rang my doorbell a little before 7:00 am, and pointed out to me that my truck was sitting on blocks. I called the police, filed necessary papers, called the car insurance people, and three to four weeks later my truck was up and running with tires and rims again. I hadn't had my vehicle vandalised in my driveway before.

Sometimes in August, his Mrs. left a note in my mailbox that the barking was bothering them, and that they would appreciate me keeping the dog inside at night.

I'm glad it was a letter, because I really blew up, and needed time to calm down before I responded. About 9:00 pm that evening, I put a note on their front door and rang the doorbell because I didn't want the note to get blown away or disappear overnight. I wrote information that they needed then. I'm not going to confine my dog, lose my security, to make the self-appointed king of the block happy

The neighbor man opened the door and said, "Why are you ringing my doorbell and waking my kids at this hour?!"

No, "hello," preceeded his cruel and hateful tone.

I told him it was info he needed that night, and I came home. They went on vacation for a week or so, and on their arrival back home, the man came to my gate, not my front door, and began yelling and complaining as usual. Do I admit that an angry man, coming on to my property, threatening me, makes me afraid. Yes, I'm afraid of the man. He doesn't function with any level of common courtesy.

This exact situation had happened at least three times in the past. This time, I called 911 and asked for the police because there was a man on my property threatening me. The police officers listened to both sides of the story. They said it was my word against his word. I had to be assertive to even get the officer to fill out an incident report. They had better things to do, but we don't want me taking matters into my own hands..

Our garbage containers are emptied by the city at the front curb. Last week, I was a day late, maybe two days, pulling my containers back in my yard. The garbage engineers had left the lid open. When I looked inside I saw about half a dozen little plastic bags that hadn't been removed. They weren't my bags, but they seemed to have been left by others who walk their dogs in the neighborhood and pick up after them.

I didn't know what the bags were at first, so I dumped them out of the container because I thought someone had put recycle bags in my garbage container. The container had been rained in, and not having plastic gloves on my hands, I left the few bags on the grass by the curb on my property. I didn't think about them again, but my mowing guys picked the bags up and disposed of them.

Around noon today, an officer from City animal control rang my bell. He was nice, polite, but his message cut me to the quick. I am to have all dog feces removed from my property by Monday, or face an unkind judge and a serious fine.

I know I need to pick up after the critter better. It'll be gone by Monday. My hatred for this man has become lifelong at this point. He's trying to battle a civil war, and he's not being civil. He's trying to aggrevate me to doing something I shouldn't out of anger. He knows I'm bipolar.

He once told me his sister is bipolar. He doesn't want to live next door to a bipolar, even though I don't have parties, loud music, and I seldom even have visitors. One evening when a girlfriend was visiting, he was in his yard. He approached my friend, and said,"Who are you? What are you doing here?"

She answered him, but his tone frightened her. She's never been back to visit me.

The yard will be clean before Monday. I have had a new Lab puppy who is 3 and 1/2 months old, and what was messy backyard before now looks like chaos. I have a wooden six foot fence, and the man couldn't see in my yard. He just wanted to escalate the war. He must have called the city, assuming that my back yard was feces filled.

His children often play in the front and back yard unsupervised. The kids are about two years apart in age, the older being in 4th or 5th grade. The big one spent the summer beating on the little one--beating him until he cried. I heard it almost every afternoon I happened to be in my backyard.

Do I escalate, and call CPS on him? I looked into it, and it's not a good idea. Because I am "mentally challenged" (I am a high functioning bipolar, but I'm messy) he could call CPS to investigate my home and living situation. My house is cluttered, but it's not garbage ridden. At any rate, I don't want a government agency to come into my home and investigate my life. Up till now, I thought my life and my home were my own.

The dog is a watch dog, she was trained to be a watch dog, and she is assertive about protecting me and the house. I know she is overly aggressive, and I can't control her when someone is annoying her. We've been walking, and she broke my hold on her, I got a leash burn on my hand, and she took off running and barking at a man who was also walking his dog. The man stopped, froze, and I was able to grab my dog's leash and walk her on home. I apologized to the man, who didn't seem as bothered about the whole thing as I was.

My dog is 11. She isn't going to change. I've thought that her aggression would someday, maybe, cause me to make the deicion to put her to sleep. There's no re-training at this point. I own my home. This war is just going to go on and on, escalating until he thinks he's got me driven from my home. It's so easy for a bully to pick on the kind and pacifistic.

I've never met such a self-centered demigod. I don't want him and his problems to be the cause of my dog's demise. But I'm tired of being harassed and bullied about this, I'm afraid in my own home.

I'm tired. I wasn't able to sleep at all last night. Today, his house next door to me is getting a new roof. I may have managed a 45 minute nap, and then the City of Dallas dog catcher man rang my doorbell. I'm hungry, angry, lonely, and tired. I can't make any decision right now. I have to pray over this, and as I do my heart is breaking.

Happy Labor Day to me, huh? I'll be crying for awhile now....