Piper2
11-12-2005, 09:30 PM
From my blog (with a few adjustments for names and emoticons):
After we got back from shopping this afternoon, we did some work in the backyard. DH ran the lawn mower over the yard, and Kevin and I raked the leaves that were on the patio and back driveway into a pile so we could bag them. After DH finished mowing and was bagging up the leaves, one of the neighbor's pit bulls suddenly jumped over their front fence (not ours) and out into the front yard. :eek We heard J (their mother wasn't at home) call one of the dog's names, and we said, "She's gone." It wasn't 2 minutes later when another dog jumped the fence :jawdrop (I don't know if J got the first one or not), and we yelled out, "There went another one!" (their windows or patio door were obviously open). Eventually (it wasn't immediately), J went out in the front yard and was just calling the dog -- not loudly, like he wasn't real intent on getting its attention. :rolleyes Then about 5 minutes later, he got into his truck and I assume went looking for it. He came back very quickly and got something out of the back seat, so I'm assuming it was the dog.
So now we have to decide what we want to do about this. I know there probably won't be anybody at the humane society on Sunday, but should we call them first thing Monday morning? Or should we wait to see if the neighbors take any steps to keep the dogs in the yard? The only solution I can see is either chaining them up or putting them in that pen they'd had the mother dog and puppies in. None of those options sound ideal -- it's getting obvious that they simply aren't able to handle the dogs anymore, but I don't know if they'll take the steps to get rid of them without some "outside help". The problem with calling the authorities on them, though, is that even though we could make the call anonymously, they're going to know who did it because we were standing right there when the dogs jumped the fence, so who else could it be? :shrug But I was talking to one of the girls who works at Curves this morning about it, and she told me that the city has zero tolerance for loose pit bulls. And it's the more aggressive females who are getting out -- the male stays chained up, and he's really more mellow, anyway. Maybe we can ask someone at church tomorrow who might know more about what to do and how to do it.
This isn't the first time the dogs have gotten out. One morning last week, DH saw one in our front yard as he was leaving for work, but he didn't want to go tell them about it because it was 6:00 in the morning and he said he didn't see any sign that they were up yet (so what, the kids go to school, so they needed to be up soon anyway :rolleyes). And we're all the time hearing the youngest chasing a dog down the street -- they're very well aware that loose pit bulls are immediately picked up if the police or animal control spots them. Last Saturday, the youngest was outside while we were doing yardwork and told us that the new cat they got about 2 weeks ago ran away because one of the dogs tried to kill it (smart cat!)! :jawdrop I just know that down toward the ends of our street (not right around our houses) there are small children playing in the evenings and on weekends, which is when the dogs are running around in the backyard (they seem to keep them in the house -- all 4 dogs -- while they're gone to work and school and the boys let them out when they get home a little after 3:00). Now I've been doing some reading about pit bulls, and I'll go along with the argument that they're not automatically vicious. But their particular instincts are to chase down small animals (or something like that), so a playing toddler could be a perfect target.
So what would you do? Would you just go ahead and call and whatever happens, happens? It's not like we're on buddy-buddy terms with these neighbors anyway, and the dogs are becoming more and more of a nuisence, both with their barking and the smell of all those dogs'...deposits in that backyard (when the wind blows right, it literally smells like my aunt's pigpen :sick). I just don't want to risk that they might want to retaliate in some way (we're homeschoolers and prime targets for things like that).
After we got back from shopping this afternoon, we did some work in the backyard. DH ran the lawn mower over the yard, and Kevin and I raked the leaves that were on the patio and back driveway into a pile so we could bag them. After DH finished mowing and was bagging up the leaves, one of the neighbor's pit bulls suddenly jumped over their front fence (not ours) and out into the front yard. :eek We heard J (their mother wasn't at home) call one of the dog's names, and we said, "She's gone." It wasn't 2 minutes later when another dog jumped the fence :jawdrop (I don't know if J got the first one or not), and we yelled out, "There went another one!" (their windows or patio door were obviously open). Eventually (it wasn't immediately), J went out in the front yard and was just calling the dog -- not loudly, like he wasn't real intent on getting its attention. :rolleyes Then about 5 minutes later, he got into his truck and I assume went looking for it. He came back very quickly and got something out of the back seat, so I'm assuming it was the dog.
So now we have to decide what we want to do about this. I know there probably won't be anybody at the humane society on Sunday, but should we call them first thing Monday morning? Or should we wait to see if the neighbors take any steps to keep the dogs in the yard? The only solution I can see is either chaining them up or putting them in that pen they'd had the mother dog and puppies in. None of those options sound ideal -- it's getting obvious that they simply aren't able to handle the dogs anymore, but I don't know if they'll take the steps to get rid of them without some "outside help". The problem with calling the authorities on them, though, is that even though we could make the call anonymously, they're going to know who did it because we were standing right there when the dogs jumped the fence, so who else could it be? :shrug But I was talking to one of the girls who works at Curves this morning about it, and she told me that the city has zero tolerance for loose pit bulls. And it's the more aggressive females who are getting out -- the male stays chained up, and he's really more mellow, anyway. Maybe we can ask someone at church tomorrow who might know more about what to do and how to do it.
This isn't the first time the dogs have gotten out. One morning last week, DH saw one in our front yard as he was leaving for work, but he didn't want to go tell them about it because it was 6:00 in the morning and he said he didn't see any sign that they were up yet (so what, the kids go to school, so they needed to be up soon anyway :rolleyes). And we're all the time hearing the youngest chasing a dog down the street -- they're very well aware that loose pit bulls are immediately picked up if the police or animal control spots them. Last Saturday, the youngest was outside while we were doing yardwork and told us that the new cat they got about 2 weeks ago ran away because one of the dogs tried to kill it (smart cat!)! :jawdrop I just know that down toward the ends of our street (not right around our houses) there are small children playing in the evenings and on weekends, which is when the dogs are running around in the backyard (they seem to keep them in the house -- all 4 dogs -- while they're gone to work and school and the boys let them out when they get home a little after 3:00). Now I've been doing some reading about pit bulls, and I'll go along with the argument that they're not automatically vicious. But their particular instincts are to chase down small animals (or something like that), so a playing toddler could be a perfect target.
So what would you do? Would you just go ahead and call and whatever happens, happens? It's not like we're on buddy-buddy terms with these neighbors anyway, and the dogs are becoming more and more of a nuisence, both with their barking and the smell of all those dogs'...deposits in that backyard (when the wind blows right, it literally smells like my aunt's pigpen :sick). I just don't want to risk that they might want to retaliate in some way (we're homeschoolers and prime targets for things like that).