Why Didn't I Think Of That?! Doggie Drama (part 2)

The very afternoon of my last posting, our neighbor's puppy dug a new hole under the fence.

This time, using the old noggin and realizing that Raisin wasn't as much of a threat to that puppy as previously thought, I went over to their house first thing and asked them to call their puppy back under the fence, then put a stepping stone over that hole the moment they did. I was so proud of myself, because the problem was solved. For a couple of days, anyway.

But I'm running out of stepping stones to work with.

The previous tenants in that home lived there with 5 grown pit bulls and a beagle. In a virtual postage stamp of a yard, I might add. Literally, had they had the brains to do it, they could have just piled up on each other, and sent scouts over the fence.

But when we learned that their Beagle was killed by the pit pulls, I got a little concerned for Raisin's safety. Those dogs had barked incessantly at poor Raisin since they day they moved in. They also jumped against the fence en masse numerous times a day, and tried digging under repeatedly.

In a very short time, it got to where I didn't even want the kids playing back there.

I finally invested in a bunch of stepping stones which I asked them to put on their side, as I didn't want it to affect our drip irrigation system which is laid out on top of the ground, but under beauty bark around our bushes.

Or was.

Now it's pretty much spread all over the place, with the hoses not watering the bushes they were intended to water, thanks to all the recent canine traffic along that fence, and me having enough to take care of inside right now.

Our new neighbors (the 3rd family in under a year and a half) are pretty good neighbors so far, which is nice, because we like having peaceful, friendly relationships with our neighbors. They also take care of their yard and don't allow dog poo and trash to accumulate out back until we can smell it over the fence or it blows into our yard, which is nice. But they used those stepping stones that were once lined up along their side of the fence to make a nice walkway in their front yard, which has left plenty of wide open space for their puppy to dig under like the naughty, poky little puppy.

I'm thinking some stakes driven into the ground all along the length of the fence is what we're looking at next, as I can't afford to fund their landscaping projects when I've got my own to maintain.

So anyway, this morning, just before my husband was to leave for work, we hear the same commotion from the other day all over again in our back yard. "Oh, man...not again!" I exclaimed and raced to the back door.

This is what we saw:



I realize the photo is a little blurry, and was taken through the screen, but do you see the pleading look that I was talking about on the puppy's face?

Yeah, the one that says, "Could you do something about your dog? I'm getting licked to death out here!" ...when the cute little thing had the nerve to come into our yard? (That's our Raisin looking rather incensed by the whole ordeal in the upper right corner of the photo).

"Could you go over and ask them to call their puppy home?" I asked my husband, trying to take advantage of the last few minutes he was home to grab a shower before the kids were up and about.

Before my shower is even over, Jeff calls into the bathroom, "Well, it's all taken care of. I took the puppy over."

?!?! For me, this was one of those Homer Simpson, "Doh!" moments. Or maybe Urkel, "Now why didn't I think of that?!"

Though I must admit that I did have a bit of a laugh about him doing this in his dress clothes, and out of curiosity asked, "So how did you accomplish that while dressed up for work. Did you have to come in and change?"

"No" he calls back. "I just held it out from me, and washed up afterwards." He was all matter-of-fact about it, confident the problem was solved, and then promptly left for work.

About an hour later, after Jericho's usual morning chores, he went out to play with Raisin for a bit before we left for school, but comes running inside and says, "Mom, that puppy's back, and he just ate all of Raisin's food!" Jericho had only put that food out a couple of minutes before, and Raisin usually takes her time eating over the course of a morning.

And suddenly the light bulb went on. That puppy was coming over for food!

Now I'm not a fan of Pit Bulls, for reasons previously stated, but this little pup is really cute. Golden eyes looking up at you from an endearing little tan and white face. Either that or my judgement was clouded by the fact that the boys were both at the glass sliding door exclaiming over the cute puppy, Jericho saying, "Can we just keep it since it keeps coming over?" and Judah crooning about the puppy the same way he does when he sees a little baby.




Then we see Raisin, and she's barking like mad. At first it looks like she's trying to be big and bad because we're all there, and she wants to appear to be 'on the job' as our loyal guard dog.



But I'm beginning to think what she's really saying here in her precise doggie dialect is, "Keep away from my food you greedy little pup!"