No matter how tall the fence is, a dog can still dig out. Unless you bury chicken wire in the ground under the fence. That is what I did when I moved into my house.
I’m sorry. Your mom did not do everything she could do. After the dog got loose the first time it was incumbent upon her to see that it never happened again. Whose fault is it? Surely not the dog’s.
I own two dogs (Jack Russells) am fostering two more (Rottweilers) and a fifth (Jack Russell) stays here quite often. All diggers. All escape artists. One of the Rotties (90 lbs.) can jump a four foot fence and wriggle through a 12" X 7" dog door!
My dogs have never escaped from the yard. Early on, before I realized how quick they were, the JRTs would sneak out the front door. Not now. They have no clue about traffic. Having a dog get loose is a low risk/high consequence situation. I’m not willing to risk it.
As someone who’d been involved with a neighbor dispute over a roaming, and supposedly viscious dog, I’d like to say that the courts don’t seem to care how a dog gets out, if there’s a complaint about it.
My housemate’s Great Dane was left out on a cable run with a locking clip to the cable. I was out for about 2 hours and when I got back home Animal Control was there, because, according to the neighbor the dog had gotten out of the kennel again. (Yes, the dog did have some Houdini in it.) Which would have been fine, except that the dog hadn’t been in the kennel area, rather it had been on that cable run. And somehow it had gotten loose by having undone it’s collar, since of course a dog couldn’t remove the locking cable clip.
Even the Animal Control officer thought it looked fishy.
But the judge still fined my housemate $400 for the dog getting loose again. Even though there was credible reason to believe that a neighbor had let the dog loose.
Unless your sister is paying the mortgage on the house, she doesn’t get a vote. If your mom wants to move she should move.
FWIW, we own a dog. He gets out on occasion. We completely understand it is our responsibility if he hurts someone. Cole may be the sweetest dog in the world, but just because he hasn’t bitten someone in the past doesn’t mean he won’t in the future.
I’m sorry your mom is having problems keeping her dog in the backyard, but it is her responsibility to keep the dog safe. The next door neighbor may be over the top, but quite frankly, Cole started it.
So, not to nit-pick, but I read that the dog got out three times, unsupervised and without a leash. This is not reasonable.
I would have done exactly as your mother’s neighbor, especially if there are kids in the neighborhood. Dogs ARE NOT PEOPLE and can be unpredictable. That is why there are leash laws. Your mother is going to lose her dog because she’s the typical inconsiderate dog owner, and frankly, I don’t feel an ounce of sympathy.
Also, I wonder if Cole pinched a nice healthy loaf while he was wandering about town. Who do you think picked it up?
grin I hadn’t actually noticed how well it worked until now.
Much as I can see things from your side (and I can) I can’t help but feel sorry for the woman with the dog phobia. As a pet owner, it’s your mother’s responsibility to ensure the dog stays in the yard.
For the benefit of your informal poll: not a dog owner currently, but I did grow up with a dog as a pet. These days I’m more a ‘cat person’. Since I take pet ownership seriously*, I have invested more than $3k to ensure the cats cannot get out of my yard.
By which I mean that I value the life and safety of my pets highly, and the rights of my neighbours get addressed in that somewhat incidentally.
I had dogs in my family when I was a kid, and one we owned was a wire-haired fox terrier. Terriers are (as the French meaning of the name would suggest) well-known for digging holes. We kept her on a very long lead as our fence was small and mostly designed to keep very young kids in/very small neighbor dogs out. If we’d had to securely fence in the large backyard instead, you bet we would’ve buried chicken wire or something to that effect to prevent digging under it. The neighbor may be a hysterical nut, but your mother needed to react to the first threat as such and protect the dog she loves with every means possible.
I doubt they’ll find the dog vicious unless the neighbor makes stuff up/the area has a “no pit bulls” ordinance, but at the very least the judge will come down very hard on your mother for her negligence in accounting for the tenacity of her dog. In the 10 or so years we had the terrier, I can only think of two or three instances where she escaped, and those were from her slipping out the door or not behaving on a time that my parents let her out to urinate off-lead, IIRC, and not from getting off the lead while out in the yard.
I grew up with dogs in a tiny little town in the middle of nowhere, where everyone simply let their dogs run free. Both dogs of my childhood died after being hit by cars, one of them while I was overseas, and the other in my arms while I held him and he bled to death. It’s 20 years later, and I’m still crying as I type this.
Your mother needs to find a way to keep her dogs inside. Not because of animal control. Not out of consideration for a neighbour with a phobia. Because keeping your pets under control is the only way to keep them safe. You’d think someone who loves and relies on her animals for emotional support would care enough about them to do right by them.
I’m sorry for your Mom’s problems. It sounds like she needs and deserves a little peace of mind without issues to deal with. Being a dog owner with plenty of neighbors brings certain responsibilities. Thats why I no longer have one. Even though it seems the lady is over reacting in the extreme it is your Mom’s responsibility to make sure the dog doesn’t get out. Spending a lot of money to make a fence higher doesn’t strike me as good planning. It’s really not doing everything she can. I would suggest a cable run.
Although it didn’t work out for OtakuLoki’s house mate I doubt your crazy neighbor would approach the dog to let it go.
I hope it all works out for your Mom. She needs to take care of herself and her own emotional needs. If that means moving then she should move ASAP. Is your sister still in school?
Move. (How old is your sister and when will she be out of high school or college? If she is out, now, it is time for her to move, anyway, barring other information such as a disability.)
Chicken wire to a depth of 24" around the base of the fence.
Run line in the back yard so that the dog cannot even reach the fence while still having the run of most of the yard.
You or sibling or friend with more land take the dog.
(What breed is the dog?)
We have a cunt down the street that has harassed me on and off for the 5 years that we have had our house. Our dog, a beautiful Samoyed named Bear came with the house because we really wanted him. I built him the Mother of all doghouses right away because he was mildly mistreated by the previous owner (who was very ill and died this week).
Anyway, cunt started calling me at odd hours (like 11:30 pm and 7:00 am) to inform me that dogs can’t be outside when it is 20F or something similar. She pretended to be anonymous which was stupid because I had her caller ID and this is a lightly populated/semi-rural area. Samoyeds are SIBERIAN sled dogs and they hate the heat but do just great at temperatures much lower than it gets even here in Massachusetts.
Cunt decided to call animal control in January when it was unseasonably warm. The animal control officer drove by and saw that there was nothing wrong at all and kept going. Cunt decided that wasn’t a good answer and demanded an official investigation. The animal control officer (a female as well) had to come over and investigate Bear’s life-style. She apologized profusely the entire time and admitted that everything about it was completely unjustified. The whole thing was senseless and ridiculous. I asked the animal control oficer to pass on orders for Cunt to cease and desict because I couldn’t deal with it any more after 5 years.
I am far from a misogynist but I think that lots of of older females should be put down because of their overly-aggressive and peace-altering tendencies. Anybody that has worked in any public-faciing role has to deal with it and it ruins much of the world.
Friends of mine have a German shorthair pointer who developed the habit of digging his way out of their fenced yard. They ran electrified wire around the inside perimeter a few inches out from the fence, a few inches off the ground, enough so the grass wouldn’t touch it. Problem solved, and a lot faster, easier and cheaper than having to bury chicken wire two feet deep all along the fence.
Argent Towers, you’re being really reasonable about our responses here, and I appreciate that and don’t want to seem like I’m attacking you after you’ve already conceded the points, but I think you (and possibly your mom) are looking at this a little wrong-headedly. No one is doing anything to your mom; she’s making decisions, and she’s getting consequences. If she decides to stay in this house for your sister, that’s a decision with consequences. If she can’t find a way to control her dog, there’s consequences. I haven’t seen anything you’ve written here so far that makes your mother an innocent victim. The only possible victim here is a dog who is being allowed to be a bad dog (for living near other people).
I’m not a dog person, but I do understand being responsible for your pets. My cats aren’t allowed to roam free (not a debating point - the law in Calgary is very clear about cats and dogs not roaming free); when they go outside, they go out on a leash, and I go out with them, because cats can’t be left on leashes alone (they are incredibly inventive at finding ways to strangle themselves). Responsible pet owners do what you have to do to keep your pets safe, within your local laws, and not bothering your neighbours. I don’t have any problems with dogs, but if my neighbour’s dog kept showing up in MY yard, I’d have a problem with that, too.
Now that things have simmered down a bit, the only thing I’d like to know is who the fence builder is. Five hundred bucks for a six foot fence of any appreciable length is a fantastic price. We just put a little critter-fence around a very small garden, and it cost us more than twice that.
Your mother’s neighbor is a neurotic bitch. Fortunately I’ve never had neighbor’s from hell with a stick up their ass like this woman is but my sister has. My sister lived across the street from the yokel from hell that did the same thing as your mothers neighbor and Shagnasty’s neighbor did. Some people enjoy being rotten and miserable. My sister’s neighbor spent 90% of his time on the phone calling the police about everything from their dog that was deaf and blind in one eye wandering out onto my sisters own yard to a camper that was parked in front of their house for 1/2 an hour.
I truly sympathise. All she can do is try to keep the dog in the yard and when your Mom goes to sell her house sell it to the worst people she can possibly find even if she has to take a cut in the asking price. Let her find out what bad neighbors really are.
What won’t be popular with whom? And to what or toward whom is the expletive intended?
I’ll just guess for the moment. Do you think that I said that the dog should be put down because there are no other options? If so, then read the next line of that post that you pulled this from. I’m not saying the dog should be put down. I was just noting that from the OP’s belief (which I thought was untrue), the logical extension would be that his/her mother couldn’t stop what was happening. **IF **that was true (which it’s clear it isn’t), then that would very likely lead to the dog being put down because there’s no other way to remedy the situation. Since there are many ways to remedy the situation, one of which the OP later mentions, then putting the dog down shouldn’t have to be the final outcome.
I’m not sure what this has to do with the situation. Seems like a red herring to me.
But I’ll answer anyway. I love dogs but don’t own one because of the huge expense and responsibility required. I’m not up to the challenge at this point. But I’ve always wanted a dog. When I was a kid, I wished for one at every birthday. But I see my neighbors and the expense and responsibility they shoulder such as keeping their dogs in the house and finding them to pick them up every time they open the door, building extensions on the house for them that costs thousands of dollars, spending enormous amounts of money on food, taking them for walks, staying up with them when they cry all night and the like, and I know I’m not ready for that just yet.
And as you can see by this thread, many dog owners have responded to you. And not only do they have the concern of the dog getting out to hurt someone, they have the added concern that the dog will get hurt by allowing it to get loose, so I don’t see the difference in the answers whether the posters have dogs or not.
I assume that you are talking about the chicken wire being in the same plane as the fence, and thus two feet deep. Not necessary, IMO. Bury the chicken wire maybe six inches down, but in the same plane as the ground, and secure with landscape staples. ETF has a great suggestion. The product is fairly cheap, (maybe $1 a foot?) and can be found at most farm supply outlets. One version is called Hotwire.
This sounds like the first half of one of those stories where the second half involves the dog that was “loyal, intelligent, friendly, not at all aggressive” getting loose and tearing a child’s throat out. It’s a black lab/pit bull mix; I’d take one look at that thing and put a bullet between its eyes if it came in my yard.
I’d make a reasonable wager that upon seeing the dog you’d have no idea it was part pit-bull.
Some people, like you, for example, are so stupid when it comes to the “pit bull” issue, it defies belief. You’re probably one of the same people who identifies any mutt (even ones with no pit bulls anywhere close in their ancestry) who remotely resembles a pit bull as one. You probably lump in boxers and other unrelated and similar looking dogs into the same category, both out of stupidity and ignorance.
Based on the totality of your posting history I also say you wouldn’t have anything close to enough nerve to actually shoot a dog, nor do I think you possess anywhere near the accuracy required to hit one between the eyes from the considerable range your cowardly ass would be at.
Also, in the vast majority of U.S. municipalities you can’t go shooting a gun off like that without facing some legal consequences.
Also, based on your claims here I sincerely hope you do not own a firearm.
