Aces Full of Links

Jesus.

I'd say snip the fencing and give me the dog, but they'd just go get another one.

So they have kids? Do they treat them any better than the dog? If it's who I'm thinking of, I'm guessing no.

Nice.

Actually, I don't think they would get another dog. I think they have another dog, and they keep it in the house.

This dog has been singled out for extra special accommodations. Why? I only have speculative theories.

If my husband is reading this, maybe he wants to think about a little dog-napping?

That's not legal, and even though we can joke, this is still a public forum. Nobody is going to be doing any dog-napping!

Part of the reason for having laws and law enforcement is to discourage vigilantism. It's too bad that the law seems to have failed here.

No, no dog-napping!

It's just a fantasy whereby this neglected dog, whose cage is filled with moldy excrement and a water bowl that's green with algae, goes to a home where it will be loved and cared for, which is what every pet needs.

This is very sad. My wish is that someone in authority steps in to remove the dog. I think with that action, two problems will be solved: an uncared for dog who is desperate for attention gets what he hopes for and, frankly, deserves--a loving, caring home; and the rats that feast on the dog's food lose their main sustenance and therefore dwindle and then disappear from your neighborhood.

Alas, we as citizens have no such power. Won't someone who does step in and solve this case?

Never being let out of a cage, or being chained up 24/7/365 is not against the law. Maybe it's because it would be hard to prove. It is simply a case of the dog not being loved, I'm afraid. It's so sad to see a family member walk into the yard -- the dog picks up her ball and stands alert in the cage, staring at them and whining -- and is completely ignored. I think that if somebody wanted the dog and offered money for her out of earshot of the teenage children, that perhaps the woman would agree to that. I've been trying to think of ways to solve this problem, and that's a possibility. But that's just a guess based on a guess -- I suspect the ex-husband bought the dog for the children. She said something to me once about it being their dog and their responsibility. It shows how hard her heart is. But then I saw her attack the neighbor's dog with a shovel once, a dog that I've carried in my arms along a busy street when it ran away once. Some people shouldn't own dogs, but they do.

God almighty, this is like buying a servant to set him free.

I'm crying right now.

Maggie had a conversation with the owner in which she asked her to move the dog (and the source of food for the rats) away from our property. After a long ramble about how much she cares about her dog, she told Maggie: "She's an old dog and you can just be patient and wait for her to die."

Classy.

However, now she's called back and said she'd stop leaving food in the bowl 24/7.

If this is the truth, then at the very least the rats will start getting hungry. The bad news is that they'll get more aggressive. The good news is that they'll finally turn to the rat poison.

This story becomes more horrible by the minute. If you don't want your dog, please, for god's sake, give it to someone who will love it.

This is just too mean and sad to be believed.

Lord almighty, what have we come to in this world.

She's kidding herself bigtime. I got a very long story about how they love the dog and care for the dog that was mostly invention. (Dog is frequently out on a long leash, the daughter takes the dog for a walk. Both nonsense.) It is sad that she believes it, because the dog is the one suffering.

I had to wonder yesterday if she reads this blog (I'm positive she does not) because they actually interacted with the dog yesterday. I'm serious when I say that this is an extremely rare event. I think the dog may have even been on a lead outside of the cage. So that was nice, though you can imagine that to hear them talking baby talk to the dog when it's out there alone all the time made me shake my head.

The neighbor was extremely confrontational when Maggie brought up the subject of the relationship between the dog and the rats, but clearly was concerned enough about something that she called back after a heated argument with a sort of concession.

Her position is that our wood pile is the reason the rats are there, not the food. Here's a picture of the wood shed I've built. As you can see, there's hardly any wood there at the moment. It's up against our deck fence, well away from the property line.

We've been out there, standing on the wood, working on the shed. We've never seen anything scurrying. The wood is well off the ground, and not the most convenient place for rats to live. Years ago (two woodpiles ago) our wood was right next to their old dog cage. Rats were indeed finding that a wonderful place to live, convenient to the canine food court.

Since the wood was moved, we've never seen evidence of rats living in our wood. Neighbor lady actually threatened to call the board of health, to which Maggie replied "please, do!"

Either she was concerned that we would make trouble with licensing boards or it she gets flustered when challenged. Perhaps it takes time for things to sink in. I don't know. What I do know is that she was lucky we put up with the heartache of the dog, the smell of feces and the constant flies as long as we did. Seeing the rats return is a "point of no return" line-crossing.

To quote her "that's nature." Our attitude is a bit different, to say the least.

She knows that we contacted the board of health last time (either she guessed it or someone told her) and her view is that we made fools of ourselves. Personally, I don't feel foolish. I think the board was foolish because she was able to fool them by covering up the holes.

I hope that her removing the dog food is not just a temporary measure because the daycare license is up for renewal. I don't want to have this sort of strained relationship.

If she can look at the problem reasonably and take it seriously, the neighborhood will be a better place for everyone, including and especially the dog. If she cannot, we'll have to continue to explore solutions within the law, with increasing severity.

Now that she's removed the food bowl, I'm concerned that they'll neglect to feed the dog in a timely matter. They probably have no idea how often/how much to feed the dog and then they'd give up and just leave the bowl out there full time again.

[Edited to add the stuff that got lost in Julie's attempt to post - James]

I don't want to be disingenuous here.

While I do sincerely care about the dog's welfare, I care a lot more about my children being exposed to the possibility of disease or injury because of the presence of rats in their play area. And "a lot more" is an understatement.

The last time we went through this, they blamed the dog for not eating when they brought it food, saying it preferred to have the food left out (that was the last time they promised not to leave food out. See how well that went?). I don't give a crap what the dog *prefers* if the other option is to have rats in the neighborhood.

Really, I can only wrap my head around so much of this at once and our efforts to get state agencies involved for the dog's sake did not pan out.

This woman sounds unbalanced. It is a wonder to me that she runs a daycare facility.

When the dog was on the other side (out only blessed respite from the rats), the neighbor on the other side saw rats taking food from her trash (she would throw it out the window with no regard for whether it landed in her barrels or not), e.g. donuts which had landed on the ground, and dragging them to the rat holes. He told her he'd lived a lot of places and "had never seen anything like it," and if she didn't take care of the rat problem, he would. Maybe she interpreted that to mean he would kill her dog, I don't know.

Now I don't know if that's why the dog came back to our side of the property or not, but she learned one thing -- you can't put trash outside. So she can learn. However, she tried to use this against me "I see your trash barrels out there." They're yard waste barrels. I've never kept trash outside, ever. I grew up in Westport, where you couldn't keep trash outside, no matter how cleverly you thought you had locked it up -- the raccoons would get into it. They've disassembled bird feeders. But maybe she can learn. I think she was thinking up reasons why the rats are "our rats." Sorry, sweetie, they move with the dog. They're YOUR rats.

Feck off, rats.