Satan's Little Helper

You all know by now that I love dogs. I hate bad dog owners and most faults of a dog are generally blamed on the owner (in my book). You know - like when your dog constantly pees or poops in your house (or in a friend's house), I think that is the fault of the owner for not training their dog properly. Or when your dog bites people, I think that is the fault of poor training.


Anywho - we live next door to Satan's Little Helper. Actually, the dog's name is Dookie as in "He poops in my mom's closet all the time". Dookie is a hyper-active poodle that antagonizes my dogs whenever I take them out to go to the bathroom in our backyard (and I use that term very loosely… as in my 3x7' plot of dirt with patches of grass).


While I find Dookie to be a bit annoying, he is a cute dog. He belongs to a family of Mexicans that consist of a father (who works as a car painter and graciously offered to paint The Mr's bumper… as if that isn't enough of a hint to him that he needs to get it repainted), a mother who doesn't speak English, twin 6 year old girls that speak perfect English and are incredibly precocious (or ridiculously annoying, it depends on who you ask) and a newborn baby. It's quite a household.


Every so often, Dookie gets out of the house (or out of the backyard) and begins his reign of terror on the neighborhood. Actually - I've never had a problem with Dookie bothering me. One evening, however, The Mr was attacked by Dookie. Maybe "attacked" is a bit extreme but Dookie definitely went after his leg and tore a hole in his pants and drew blood. When The Mr went next door to tell the mother (more so to find out if Dookie was up-to-date on his shots), the mother responded in her broken English, "sorry".


Since The Mr didn't start foaming at the mouth after the bite, we didn't do anything about it. The Mr now just proceeds with caution anytime Dookie is on the loose. On one particular incident, the neighbors (the ones who so stylishly hung a "Scarface" blanket in their front window) offered up their boxer to scare off Dookie. Apparently Dookie had attacked (bitten) one of their kids.


Aaanywho - that was a really long backstory just to tell you about my conversation with the twins. While they can annoy me from time to time, they are quite sweet and always want to play with my dogs. I ran into them yesterday and while letting them play with my dogs, they proceeded to tell me that the police were going to take Dookie away. The Scarface blanket neighbors had reported Dookie to the police after he bit another one of their children and she stopped by the house to let them know.


Holy hell - the pitiful looks on these girls' faces broke my heart. I told them that the police can't take Dookie away forever (unless he's rabid) but that they'd hold him at animal control for 5 days. They would have to pay a fine of $100/day (so $500 total) to get Dookie out. "But my dad doesn't have that kind of money." I almost wrote them a check right there (until I realized that I, too, don't have that kind of money).


So while I can scoff at bad dog owners, it's tough for me to get angry with 6 year olds when their dog bites someone. I'm not condoning it, but you know - it's just tough to look at the sad eyes of a kid and say, "your dog SHOULD be taken away, you bad dog owners! You need to keep a better eye on him."

I hope that the lady was just bluffing to scare the family into keeping their dog locked up because it would be heartbreaking to see their dog taken away from them. Although it probably should be especially since they haven't taken him to a vet in years (they can't afford to).

My heart strings are being tugged!