Remember our neighbor Buddy? He’s an owner of one of the dogs who drives us crazy, “who” referring both to him and the dog. Anyway, he was out on his back step the other morning when I went out to our shed to retrieve some speakers I wanted to take to the thrift store, after helping a pack rat move.
So there I was, lugging the heavy speakers into the house, to take through to my truck parked out front, and there was Buddy, sitting on his back steps, two houses down, smoking a cigarette.
“Good morning!” he called out to me.
Feeling a bit as though my personal space had been violated from not so afar, and knowing that he could possibly think I hadn’t heard him, I failed to respond.
“Good morning!” he called again.
“Oh, hey, good morning, Buddy!” I called back.
“Are you moving?”
“Yep. Planning to!”
At some point in this conversation, or maybe it started even before the exchange, Buddy’s dog started barking at me or at the world, whichever.
“Ronnie, be quiet,” Buddy started. Oh no, I thought. Here we go.
In the next moments, Buddy did his best to out be-annoying his dog, to out-perro the perro. “Aww, Ronnie, stop! You’ll have to go inside! Nobody wants to hear you barking this early in the morning! Ronnie! Do I need to take you inside?”
Can we say empty threats? The next thing I knew, Buddy was shutting the door behind himself, the dog still out in the yard, still barking.
As I have previously noted, this dog problem (well, neighbor problem) is a detriment to home selling. Maybe, as my dear reader Dr. Perfection suggested, we should find some way to sedate the dogs while prospective buyers are present. Or, as my pastor suggested after reading an article in our local paper, maybe we should try out www.RottenNeighbor.com, although I’m guessing that further noting our neighbors’ deficiencies won’t help sell the house. My mother suggested listing “great for pets” as a perk, an idea our real estate agent turned down. At the moment, we’re letting the situation play itself out in hopes that someone just like our neighbors, but with money and much bigger dogs, will happen by.
At any rate, in case you were interested, I’d like to share M’s most recent dog experience with you. It took place just half an hour ago, while she was burying our compost in the garden: