People and dogs

I don't know why we even try or expect people to act decently and respect boundaries. So, dh is outside plowing when I finish up work yesterday. I go out to the chicken coop to tend to them and hear dh out at the entrance to our neighborhood talking with young neighbor, who lives down at the end of the street, who has the hyper dog now being let loose all the time. She was there waiting for the school bus to pull up. So, I go back inside and hear dh back to plowing.

A few minutes later I get a text from young neighbor: Hello! It sounds like D is really being a pain in the ass. Coming over and crapping in your yard and making (Mr's) dogs bark, jumping on your doors… I’m so sorry that he’s doing that!

I read the text and think "ok! she gets it and is going to take care of the problem". I'm trying to think of what to text in reply and before I can think of what to say she keeps texting:

I’m not sure what to do about it right now.. but I did tell (dh) though, seriously STOP giving him treats and you really can kick him in the butt when he shows up. Maybe we could try stopping any positive reinforcement whatsoever to start with (act like you hate him?) and see if that helps?

WHAT?!! Seriously? She doesn't know what to do about it?! No, we are not kicking your dog (and she meant that literally) and no, we are not being mean to your dog. I was just speechless and no idea what to even reply. I knew I needed to reply, but dang! I didn't want to be super nice because that just lets her keep doing it. But I didn't want to sound rude, either. I had no clue what to say back to her.

Then another text:  And if he's still a nuisance when spring rolls around we'll see about a fence or something maybe? Sorry about him

OMG! So, because you don't want to keep your animal on your property, it's ok if he just goes and does whatever he wants, wherever he wants and it's our problem, not yours?! At this point I'm just keeping my fingers off my phone because what I would text back at this point would not come across as very neighborly at all.

So, then dh comes inside from plowing. I say to him, apparently you talked to young neighbor about the dog again? He says ya....and she's not going to do anything about it! I said ya....she texted me about it. I told him what the texts said and he said, that's not what she told him. She told dh that she wasn't getting a fence unless the other neighbors (meaning the eventual neighbors in the 3 2-acre lots between us) decide to "be assholes about it". 

Anyway, while she's out at the corner talking to dh and her son is getting off the bus, she has the dog on a leash and he's constantly trying to jump up onto the mule/plow. She kept pulling him back and saying 'he doesn't jump up on our stuff". Dh said she kept jerking him back on the leash and he kept jumping up against the mule. (I'm thinking to myself how hard is it to take a couple steps back so he can't reach the vehicle he's jumping up on? or shorten the lead you are giving him). Anyhow, dh offers little boy if he wants to ride down the street with him to "help plow" and of course he does, LOL. Mom walks back home with the dog. They get down to their property and dh said they are almost snowed in their driveway and have not plowed. She says, ya, our quad broke. DH says I'll plow it for you, no problem. With this big plow he has now he was done in short order and at least they have a path out their driveway now.

Then she texts me again (I still have not responded to her). A big thank you to dh for plowing!! It's so nice. I finally replied and said "He loves to plow and thank you for working on the dog problem". At this point there is really nothing that will help the situation when someone thinks it's ok that their hyper dog doesn't need any boundaries. Think of the hyper-ist dog you can and this is this dog.  And we could totally deal with this if it was like before - where it was just randomly, every so often, the dog would come and be annoying. Now it's every day, twice a day. An hour or so before this conversation (dh had just gone outside to start shoveling) Mr and Mrs got home. They let their dogs out of their kennel and were outside with them while they ran around their property. Then here comes the hyper dog....just causing total chaos with their 3 dogs to the point they had to put their dogs inside the house, just to get it all calmed down and so that the other neighbor's dog would leave.