Other People's Dogs

My retirement home ideal has been that it be within walking distance of a trout stream. That requirement has been superseded by a new one: I want to live where I can not hear other people's dogs.

I don't know why people bother to own dogs when they either stake them out or cage them in a small pen and, aside from feeding them, have no interaction with them.

My neighbors on one side have four dogs. One is a well-mannered Shepherd mix whose only social sins are crapping on the dogless lawn of a neighbor across the street and barking softly at me when I walk out my driveway, which begins at the property line a few feet from that dog's owner's house. This does not bother me.

The other three dogs are penned, a Beagle bitch and her two bastard offspring of undetermined paternity. The Beagle bays and barks for hours, and her kids' bark responses are set off by any motion or sound within their range of sight or hearing.

I told the man next door that it is not in my plan to spend my retirement years listening to his dogs bark 24/7, and that I have an electronic collar I will be happy to lend him. Dog barks, collar bites. Once the dog understands this, a dummy collar will suffice. I haven't taken the collar over there yet. I'm beginning to realize collaring one dog will be like turning back the tide with a pitch fork.

Former neighbors on the other side of me had a rotating assortment of dogs, chained and ignored. I sometimes went over there when no one was home to untagle some poor mutt's chain so it could get to its water bowl. I was happy when they all left, dogs and people. The house stayed vacant for many peaceful months.

The new occupants have dogs, cats, chickens, and ducks. The dogs were penned near the neighbors' house and seldom barked. I don't mind the crowing of roosters and the mutterings of ducks, but the dogs...

The neighbor decided to move their pens to the far side of their large lot, right next to the property line between our houses. He said the ground was too wet where they were. Their new Great Dane doesn't bark quite as much as the mutt in the adjoining pen, but, because they are close to my house, they bark furiously whenever we go out our door and into our side yard, or whenever our dog is within their view. Or just whenever. They think we are intruders on their turf.

We've been thinking for some time of enclosing our house and yard with a white picket fence, a decorative boundary that would keep our dog from wandering but would not be a barrier to the world. I'm thinking now of a six-foot board fence. Maybe if the damn dogs can't see me...