I moved to the suburbs for quiet. Although I grew up in a suburban house, I prefer the idea of a high-rise apartment with steel doors and intercom entrance and desk staff and a guy who fixes your toilet, all within walking distance to shopping and subway. I mean, the concept looks great on paper. Problem is the morons with subwoofers, not to mention the parents who let their kids rollerblade in the hallways.
So last month we bought a house, which required all of our money and more than all of our time, plus the opening of several major blood vessels as well as multiple fallings-out with family members including the one with whom I was buying the house. But it's all worth it, because we will never again come home to hear the fat kid yelling for three hours under our balcony while he bounces a basketball against our wall. Now we have peace.
Enter the Rottweiler. The neighbors across the street apparently have such a depraved notion of civilization that they feel it is appropriate to put a homicidal 135-lb. monster in their yard. Whenever I go out to my car, I can see its bearlike mass through the fence as it yells, in dog language, "Hello, I would like to tear your head off and eat it." If it did manage to get out of that fence-- which the neighbors proudly built themselves and which has sections that have proudly fallen over into the yard next door-- then I would make it about two steps back to my house before the animal dragged me to the ground and set about mauling me.
Not that it really would. I'm sure it's a nice dog. But it sure as hell barks that way, and I have seen it running around loose, and anyway, I resent being threatened with dismemberment just for going out to get the paper.
But the worst part is that they stick it in the backyard and ignore it for long periods of time, so that it amuses itself by barking and howling for hours on end, day and night. I've figured out that it works in roughly two-hour shifts, around the clock. Two hours of barking that evolves into not so much barking as an unearthly howling shriek, followed by about two hours of quiet, followed by another two hours of shrieking. I've heard it going at 1 AM, 5 AM, 9 AM, 1 PM, and so on until the following 1 AM.
What kind of asshole gets a huge attack dog and parks it in his yard like his other macho lifestyle accessories, as if it's just an SUV with a stubby tail, and then makes his neighbors listen while it goes conspicuously insane? What kind of asshole gets a huge attack dog in the first place? What is it guarding? The Sanford-and-Son heap of discarded interior doors from his remodeling projects?
I went over and started banging on his door so hard that it jumped in the frame. Nobody home, but guess what? The dog stopped barking then! That's right! It wants to kill me whenever I do something threatening like walk down my front steps, but when I'm halfway to smashing its master's door in, it thinks all is well. I guess it was thinking, oh boy, someone's in the house-- they might play with me!
The owner and his family had gone away for the evening, at least until the wee hours, and left all the windows open with fans in them. I could have pushed a screen in and taken all his precious shit while his stupid brute of a dog sat drooling in the backyard. Instead, I left a note saying he'd better shut the dog up or I'd get the city on him, and thanks a lot for annoying us. It worked.
I've met the guy. High-paid, well spoken professional with at least two houses and three great-looking kids. He's huge, too. I confess that when I was hammering on his door like the drug police, I was a little concerned that he might kick my skinny ass across his yard. But there's only so much you can take.