Who let the dogs out, indeed!

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

Too soft for the pit, too dumb for anywhere else.

So, here’s the story, as I have witnessed it.

Many of you have seen pictures of my dog. My dog is a beloved family member. For her last birthday, I cooked her a steak, medium rare, and presented it to her with candles and all.

Enough background. Suffice it to say that I love my dog. She’s cool.

I have a neighbor who has two large dogs. They bark at night. One of them, the Malamute, denys the obvious interpretation of its breed name by howling at the moon some nights. These dogs are, in short, annoying.

I have a wooden fence that defines the back yard. It’s roughly 6 feet tall. It is of the variety where the individual planks that make the fence are seperated a bit on one side, and staggered on the other. It provides privacy, yet one can still observe the happenings on the other side of the fence when parallax is factored in.

As of late, the dogs next door have decided that my back yard is much more interesting that their own. Herein lies the problem.

More historical background: My dog does not like other dogs. When we rescued her from the animal shelter, we were informed that she had been abandoned, and the few scars that were visible on her face and body were likely from having to fight for food while homeless. (incidentally, she was adopted at 28 lbs., and now weighs 60, without having grown. She was emaciated, and sickly. I could see that she would be a good dog, and a good family pet, though.) She is not vicious, by any means, but simply does not like other dogs.

So, about two weeks ago, I get a phone call. Apparently, the dogs next door chewed a hole through the fence and came into the yard. My dog was in the midst of fighting them off from entering the house through her doggie door. She is very protective of Mini Cyni, the newborn in the household. Otherwise, she most likely would have simply barked her disapproval. The neighbor, when informed, immediately retrieved her dogs, and promised to have the fence fixed.

Fast forward to last night. The dogs have broken in two other times since. One time, they hurdled the fence from their crates.

There I sit, happily playing a Nintendo game, when my dog shows signs of distress. I attribute it to snow melting off the roof. The sounds of it falling to the ground could have disturbed her. She gets up, goes outside, and comes back in. Shortly thereafter, I hear the doorflap open, and heavy breathing sounds.

I flash into action, bounding recklessly into the laundry room, 6" razor sharp blade in hand, (I picked it up on my way through the kitchen area) ready to plunge it into the intruder. Stopping the knife in mid-arc, I realize that it is one of the next-door dog duo. They are in the yard again. It is pitch dark outside, and my neighbor may or may not be home.

I trudge over there, and inform her that I have a couple of visitors. She, bathrobe and all, goes into her yard and starts calling them. I have to go into my yard, catch these dogs while slipping on unmelted snow, and shove them back through the fence. My dog heroically watches the action from the window. When the interlopers are returned to their land, I am again promised that this will be remedied.

Here’s where I started to take matters into my own hands.

I’ve since acquired a Super Soaker. It is now filled with vinegar. I took some plywood from the garage, and braced it against the hole with a bench that I sometimes enjoy sitting upon. The Super Soaker will be used to spray the terrible beasts the next time they come through, IF THEY DO.

The reason I stress the IF factor is that I made another purchase. I have purchased a bottle of Dave’s Insanity Sauce. (for those of you who are not familiar with it, it is the only product ever BANNED from the National Fiery Foods competition for being TOO HOT) Today, after work is done, I plan to go home and liberally paint this stuff on the boards of the fence. If they continue to chew their way through, I can only assume that they are direct relatives of Cerberus. Maybe the Devil does not like vinegar. I hope so.

Regardless, this is my contibution to the annals of the Mundane, the Pointless, and the Stuff I Must Share.

Thank you for your support.

2

The visuals this gives me are great.

Dog walks up to fence. Dog starts gnawing at fence. Dog gets surprised look on face. Dog runs off, Loony Toons style, with flames errupting from its mouth and smoke from its ears :slight_smile:

Vinegar… ouch. Make sure they don’t get it in the eyes. After all, it’s not the DOGS fault, it’s your neighbour who should keep them inside, or otherwise restrained so they will not come on your property.

Go ahead, make some wiseass remarks about coming on your property. I dare you.

3

Do you write for a living? That was a very interesting escapade. I think you have taken excellent measures to keep those dogs from coming back. And your dog is beautiful. [She reminds me of our Duchess, whom we adopted from the animal shelter in 94, when she was nine and a half years old. She, too had been abused. She died this summer at the ripe old age of fifteen.]

Anyway, I don’t think your measures will hurt the dogs, and will probably work much better than whatever Ms. Neighbor has been able to do.

4

Perhaps using the Super Soaker on your neighbour might be equally effective.

I have a neighbour who has one of those dogs and I have been wondering what to do about him. I wonder if the kids will miss the super soaker when I “borrow” it?

5

I hear that land mines work wonders on annoying, intrusive dogs…

Er, did I say that out loud??

6

One word: BB Gun (how many words is that?)

7

Lord Davidson and Omni, dears, we don’t want to hurt the little darlings, now, do we? [politically incorrect hijack] I thought guy liked dogs. [/politically incorrect hijack]

-----:stuck_out_tongue:
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I have a dog now, Nickels Freckles Pickles (Nick for short), for whom neither of those methods would be effective. Might have to resort to nuclear weaponry. But he’s been staying home really well now that imthjckaz got his kennel finished.

8

Well, I’m certainly going for the deterrence by displeasure model, versus the inflict pain method. After I figure out how the hell to keep them out of my yard, I am going to go full-force into how to shut them up from barking.

I would put up one of those ultrasonic things; whenever the dog barks, it emits a horrid noise that makes the dog shut up. The bad thing is that my dog would also suffer from that. She’s so good, never barks unless she feels threatened. A quiet, wonderful doggie.

Incidentally, in that picture I linked above, she sneezed a couple seconds after the picture was taken, and indeed blew the candles out.

9

Larry (a male Great Dane/Shephard mix) was 1 1/2 years old, nearly 130 lbs, when we brought home a seven week old puppy (a female German Shephard). Long stroy short: Larry suffered from separation anxiety so we added another dog to our family to keep him company.

We live on a dirt road in the boonies so every workday morning the dogs would be taken for a walk before hubby and I would depart for work. Samantha (the new puppy) had this very annoying habit of attaching herself to Larry’s tail while on these walks. Poor Larry, not an aggressive bone in his body, would hobble along with this growing puppy clamped to his tail.

Perhaps I should take a moment to explain why “his tail”. I’m thinking it was because Larry was a huge dog and quite tall that his tail was all she could reach.

I tried everything to teach Samantha that this really wasn’t a good idea, but being a puppy, and Larry not assisting me in this argument, I failed to get through. That’s when I remembered that Tobasco Sauch had cured Larry’s baseboard cravings. A drop or two applied to the tail did the trick. Within a week Samantha no longer attached herself to his tail.

10

What makes you think I had the dogs in mind?