Walter

I haven't had a lot of luck with obtaining peace with neighbors. Let me explain a bit. At the first house I owned, I was surrounded on three sides by neighbors with small yapping dogs that were constantly neglected in the backyard and spent their days yapping at my every move. If I went outside on the back deck to grill supper, I would grill to the constant sound of dogs yapping constantly at me. I'm not sure how others can find this acceptable but it wore me down not being able to enjoy my own yard in relative silence, at least as silent as one can get in a small town environment.

So when we moved, one of my criteria was to find a house with more space between myself and my neighbors. After almost a year of looking, we found it. Our current house is surrounded by trees on two sides and the only neighbor which we have that actually shares one of our borders yard to yard didn't have dogs, only cats. That neighbor died and her replacements have two dogs but they are old and spend all their time indoors and I have yet to hear them bark. 

However, the one neighbor that lives across the street is a different story altogether. 

When we moved here they had a small yapping dog that always barked whenever we were outside. The dog never showed signs of aggression towards us other than barking furiously and sometimes roaming our property when we weren't outside. Our kids, small at the time, were afraid of the barking dog and so whenever we stopped by on Halloween night, it was always a struggle calming them while the neighbor, owners of the dog, would just tell them not to be afraid because their dog doesn't bite. Eventually we stopped going over and when our neighbors asked, I would tell them that our kids were afraid of their dog, hoping they might get the message but it always went unheard.

Eventually that dog disappeared. I suspect another neighbor at the time likely took it out since it did sometimes strayed on other properties to use as a bathroom. We have leash laws in our small town but they weren't being followed. When the neighbors who owned the dog told me their dog was missing, I half heartedly looked through my woods for it but never did find it. Inside I was gleefully happy though.

That winter while our neighbors were vacationing down south, it was blissfully silent in our neighborhood but when they came back in the spring, they came back with another small yapping dog exactly like the first one and just as bad. It didn't last long, perhaps due to a failed poisoning by a neighbor or just bad luck. All I know is perhaps a year later, my neighbor said it got sick and had to be put down. However, that dog was replaced nearly immediately with Walter, another small yapping dog.

Walter is different than the rest. He knows no boundaries so he will come over into my lawn even if he sees me out there. He also doesn't just bark continuously but snarls viciously too. He acts aggressively towards me, my wife or kids whenever he is outside.  The only small difference is that our neighbors are older and so only let him out a few times a day to do his business so unless our periods of times outside coincide, I don't have him snarling at my feet. 

I'm a big enough guy I'm not afraid of him and more than once, I have walked towards him until he backed out of my yard and across the street. Walter is smart enough to know I am an alpha dog and wisely keeps just out of the reach of my foot. However, once when I was standing talking to our neighbor on their property, he did sneak up behind me and tried to bite me but bounced his snout off the back of my ankle. 

We've pretty much lived with Walter now for going on I think three years now but this spring, he finally bit my wife though he didn't break the skin. I had to go out to the street where my wife was trying to return from a walk and chase him off so she could return home. That crossed the line for me. I have politely tried to suggest to my neighbors that they keep Walter tied up per town laws or get him trained but they always say he wouldn't bit anyone and is "more scared of us than we are of him". In our town, you can't report animal violations without leaving your name and since our other two neighbor's have been vacant houses for a couple years, I have figured it would be pretty obvious who called their flagrant violations into animal control even if the control officer didn't give them my name. So in the interest of neighbor relations, I bit my tongue.

But with my wife newly bitten and two neighbors having filled the vacant houses this spring, I called it in and reported Walter hoping that they would think one of our new neighbors complained. Both of them have privately complained to me about Walter and his lack of training or control. Animal control came out and drove by several times and perhaps even talked to our neighbors because for a month, we never saw Walter outside unless he was on a leash. It was a blissful month to be able to enjoy our property again without a snarling barking dog always present. But then it went right back to the way it had been. 

I have thought about reporting it again but I think I learned the reason. Our neighbors who own Walter are both close to 80 years old and the husband isn't in good physical shape. I have had to help pick him up off the floor where he had fallen and couldn't get back up and once off a toilet where he couldn't get stood back up. Both times his wife had locked Walter up in a room so I could help without him snarling and barking at me. During the last time, she mentioned that she had liver cancer and was undergoing treatments. Recently we learned that she is now under home hospice care because the cancer had spread and treatments were no longer going to help her. 

I'm guessing this explains why Walter is now being left outside again snarling and barking whenever he seems someone else. But knowing that perhaps his time is limited, I have bit my tongue and haven't reported him again. Likely the situation is going to resolve itself in the next six months to a year. 

I am just praying that when new neighbors move in, they don't have a small yapping dog that they leave outside all the time. I've had my fill of those sorts of neighbors and dogs.