Dear Neighbor:

Are  you missing something? Your DOG, maybe?

So, hey, Neighbor, let me explain to you how my morning went, thanks to your inability to care for your puppy. As you know, we have returned your dog to your yard no less than five times in the past six days.

This space is five inches high.

I got ready for work this morning and as I was about to leave, my husband told me that your dog was back, and stuck, yet again, under my studio, unable to get out. Now, you may not know this, but my husband has degenerative disk disease and has rods in his neck. He is not supposed to be digging, yet he did yesterday to rescue your dog, and as a result is having a pretty hard time getting around today. Because of this, I had to call in late to work so that your dog wouldn’t remain under the building all day until I could return to dig her out.

I changed into my yard clothes and commenced to pulling the steps away from the back door, removing the lattice underpinning and went to digging. The whole while, your baby was crying, howling and scared because she’d (once again) wedged herself in there so tightly that she couldn’t back herself out the way she came. After what seemed like an eternity (and I’m sure it was only 30-45 minutes), I finally managed to get your dog out from under the building. I dug deep enough to get a goat sized dog out of an originally five inch space. We’ll chalk that up as my exercise for the day.

At this point she went and relieved herself, and based on the appearance of the deposit she made in the yard? She is either sick, wormy, stressed or all of the above and you ought to be ashamed of yourself. Your poor dog was hungry; sooooo hungry. She devoured three healthy bowls of dog food and I can’t tell you how many bowls of water, all within 30 minutes. Were you even feeding her, bro?

As many times as we have brought her back to your yard after you not caring enough to answer the door, we knew that if we simply lathered, rinsed and repeated, she would just get out again and find her way back under our studio. Now I don’t know about you, but I have better things to do (i.e. go to my job) than be spending my time repeatedly digging other people’s animals out of sticky situations. Well, yeah, I kind of DO know about you; enough to know that you obviously don’t have time to care for a dog.

It is for this reason that you will find your dog at the animal shelter. She will be vaccinated, dewormed, fed and otherwise taken care of. I would have kept her, myself, had I not already had seven in my charge. Well, that and it would be kind of awkward to be walking the dog in front of your house, but one of us knows that dogs need exercise (and let’s be clear…one of us isn’t you).

It’s bad enough that the breed has a nasty reputation, but even I know that if a puppy is properly raised and socialized, he or she has every chance of growing up to be a happy, well behaved adult dog. You didn’t even seem to realize your “killer status symbol” was even gone in most cases. We watched her chase plastic shopping bags around the yard in the rain last Saturday for most of the day. That is NOT properly socializing a dog. That said? Had your dog remained with you I can imagine that she and one of the neighborhood kids or pets would have become a statistic, and more than likely she would have had to be put down. At least now she has a fighting chance at life and a happy home with people who will care for her PROPERLY.

Based on the fact that you haven’t even been out of the house looking for her, I would be totally surprised if you are even aware that she isn’t in your yard.

I apologize for having to have taken this step, but you left us no choice.

Sincerely,

Your Neighbor