What's Wrong With People?

It's been a long time since I've written here but I've been really busy catching up on all the things I couldn't do when Harley was barking night & day, like getting sleep & doing yard work. So why today am I taking time out to write? Because on this particularly lovely day my yard is enveloped in a dog crap miasma and it was just not appealing to me so I came inside early.

To digress for a moment and quickly summarize the situation, I live in Monroe, NC next door to a barking dog named Harley. Harley's barking is shrill, abrupt and echoes, made my years ring and conversation outside of my house was impossible without raising your voice when he's having a psycho barking fit, which used to often last for several hours. Harley was barking from the first day they brought him home as a puppy in the summer of 2007 and if he was outside he was barking. Period. Then in the Spring of 2009 he became a full time yard dog because my neighbors were too stupid to house train him. I'd say he barked a good 16 hours out of 24, more depending on how often I attempted to go outside, and I'm not even sure if he really slept or just rested up and caught his breath for the next 3-5 hour round of barking.

Jump ahead to early 2010: after calling the cops & animal control a number of times earlier this year because Harley's barking was ruining my life, my neighbors, or actually their son who had to move back home due to his own misfortune, finally put some effort into making Harley stop barking so much. That's not to say that Harley was always quiet, but he was quiet enough for me to finally be able to relax in my house, get some decent sleep, eat without having an upset stomach, and catch up on my yard work (that's right, I couldn't go into my yard without being barked at the whole time). They even cleaned up the dog crap so I could spend time in my yard without holding my breath, and I could open my windows on a nice day without my whole house eventually smelling like dog shit.

However, as the year has progressed to the present, my neighbors, and Harley, have begun to slack off. Harley is being allowed to bark more and more and, well, like I said, the dog crap is piling up again.

Oh, of course, I can't blame them. After all, I'm the one who embarrassed them because the police and animal control showed up at their house so many times and because of this I really deserve to be awakened at 6:15 a.m. This is when my neighbor goes out and makes all 3 of her dogs bark just long enough to wake me up, and yes, I caught her doing it one morning when I was awakened into a foul mood and ran out to see what the hell the dogs were barking at, and I believe she (the passive aggressive sociopath) does this regularly both in the morning and in the evening...just to remind me of what a bad neighbor I am. Forget Sundays...which used to be the quietest day of the week around here, and on which day I knew I could look forward to sleeping in without traffic noise. Forget it now.

And I'm the despicable ass who put up the cat fence around my yard (after they blamed my cat for all the barking, even when he was in the house, and threatened to trap him and send him to the shelter) and so now they can't pull their Coachman RV around my driveway which enabled them to then easily back it into their parking area.

My fault!!! Why should they keep their dogs quiet now and why should they continue to clean up the dog crap after I've been such a bad neighbor for not wanting to hear their dog bark 24/7 and for wanting to keep my cat safe on my own property?

Yes, once again Harley has begun to bark at this & that and at me as soon as he hears me in the yard and they just let him go on and on. It's not nearly as bad as it was last year, but still very loud and it's extremely annoying and stressful when he is carrying on. To top it off, the folks behind me, who had 3 dogs, then only 1 dog, but now have 2 dogs, all chained up and ignored (one dog is chained & penned...), are allowing their dogs to bark for hours, day & night, and if they aren't already barking they begin barking when they hear or see me in my yard (and both dogs are practically swimming in their own feces). And, since I'm such a crappy fucking neighbor, the folks on the other side of me now have a dog which doesn't bark, thankfully, but which they allow to crap all over their yard, front & back, and there the crap sits to fester on a nice warm day. I even stepped in a pile of it in their front yard the other day when I walked over to talk to my neighbor, who was sitting on the picnic bench in her front yard. The pile was right next to the picnic bench.

My fault!!! Silly me; why would I dare think there would NOT be any dog shit next to the picnic bench where my neighbors and their friends are always hanging out?

You know, I'd gladly buy dog poop bags for my all my neighbors if they would just use them. Unfortunately, I don't think those bags would get used for poop. Not dog poop anyway.

Don't they realize that even Barbie picks up her dog's poop?







So add the 1 dog's crap to the left of me + the 2 dogs' crap behind me + the 3 dogs' crap on the right of me and what do you get?

And add the 3 dogs barking on the right + the 2 dogs barking behind + maybe 5 other dogs barking in a 2 block radius of my place and what do you get?

What you get is a pretty shitty piece of property that nobody is going to want to buy so I can't even move. But why should my neighbors care? It's not my dogs who are barking and stinking them out of house and home. Hell, I don't even have a dog.

Why should any of these charming folks clean up their dogs' poop, or teach their dogs to be good? Well, I don't know. Maybe out of respect for yourselves & your dogs, if not for your neighbors? When I had dogs I did it because I didn't want disgusting stinky dog crap all over my yard, because it's disgusting to go to the park and have to watch out for dog turds in the grass while you are walking around (or wonder if you are laying on a piece of decomposed dog shit in the grass), because I didn't want unruly dogs who didn't know how to behave, and because I like to be a good neighbor (even if I don't like my neighbors).

And another reason I didn't leave dog shit laying around and let my dogs run around barking like a pack of wild animals (which, by the way, is an incorrect cliche because wild dogs don't run around barking like that) is because I'm respectful and I feel bound to the integrity of my ethics and morality to not only NOT add to the pollution of the earth but to also be the type of neighbor that I would like to live next to. And even if my neighbors have much lower standards I refuse to let them dictate who I am or to allow them to drive me to compromising my integrity. But being kind and considerate is becoming more and more difficult living among all these passive aggressive, unhygienic, rude, irresponsible...uh...people.

So I want to know, what is wrong with people? Why don't people respect at least themselves, if no one else, enough to clean up the dog crap in their yards, and why don't they care enough about their own dogs to teach them to be good, quiet neighbors?

I realize there are a lot of conscientious and responsible dog owners, and I know some of them, but the irresponsible dog owners give you all a bad name. I know there's a lot of good dogs out there, but these days when I first meet a dog I'm suspicious of it's barking habits until I get to know the dog, and when someone says they have a dog I view them with suspicion even though they might be the best dog owner on the planet. You can all thank my lovely neighbors for that.

Oh, and another thing. I want to know why the law enforcement does not enforce the codes? It plainly states that seriously annoying barking is a violation, as is allowing any type of smelly waste to accumulate on your property.