Order to Appear

We received our hearing notice with an order to appear on Tuesday, April 13, at 10:15 a.m. I guess they didn't care much about our request for a Thursday, first thing in the morning. A girl can dream though!

Failure to obey the notice can result in a $2,500 fine. We'll be there. I wonder if they will...

A $50 Ticket and a Fat Groundhog Head

The notice for our dog court hearing showed up in the mail today. We checked the "not liable" box and will drop it back in the mail tomorrow. For $50 plus a $27 administration fee we can avoid the hearing, but why? The burden of proof is on the crazy next door neighbors, and I'm fairly certain I have proof to dispute any stories they can tell.

Besides, seeing them in public ought to be interesting. That is if they show up. We're taking bets on this one, especially after what happened this morning.

The highlight of my day came when I was sitting on my couch, working on my laptop. Mulligan and Pippin were both startled awake and ran outside and began pacing the length of the common wall we share with the crazy next door neighbors. Mulligan is usually too busy sleeping to do much of anything, so his sudden interest in pacing along side Pippin interested me.

I got up, and very, very quietly opened the sliding glass door. I stood there, watching my dogs pace, and listening to Mrs. crazy speak quietly to her dog, whose dog tags quietly jingled. Suddenly, eerily similar to a chubby groundhog who pokes its head out of its hole, a head popped up over the wall and there she was, looking me right in the eye. Me on my patio, her on a chair or ladder. I can't describe the look on her face when she saw me standing there. Surprise was only one of her wretched expressions.

"I was wondering why they got so quiet all of the sudden," she said.

"So quiet?" I asked. "Did you expect them to remain that way after your face showed up in my yard?"

Her groundhog head popped back down.

"Yeah, they've been barking since 8 a.m." she shouted over the wall. It was 8:25.

"Enough with the lies," I yelled back. But I wasn't done. "You really are a piece of work, you know that? Taunting dogs so you can call the police. What is the matter with you?"

I then went in and grabbed my phone. This was too good not to share with my husband.

I recanted the story standing in the back yard, speaking as loudly as possible so she could hear me. At the end of the story I added as loudly as possible, "I really just feel sorry for her," I said. "Her life is so small."

And that's the truth. But just for good measure I asked O'Malley, the most silent dog ever, to speak repeatedly. He's very obedient sometimes.

The Pepsi Cup

Last Saturday a windshield replacement guy came to replace someone's windshield in our neighborhood. An enterprising young guy, he did a little door-to-door sales before leaving the neighborhood. He hit up my husband as he was returning home from work.

Windshield guy carried a Pepsi cup with him, and later Saturday evening as we were leaving the house, we noticed the cup had been left at the end of our crazy next door neighbors' driveway. Windshield guy must have set it down as he was talking to them.$

My husband made a prediction that the cup would mysteriously end up in our yard.

The law of attraction is a mysterious thing. Sunday morning we woke up to the gift of a Pepsi cup sitting in our driveway.

A text to the crazies went a little something like this, "Enough of the childish games. Please come pick up the garbage you placed in our driveway."

Mr. crazy nearly immediately came out of his front door, walked across his driveway, look at the cup, yelled, "fuck!" and turned around and walked back inside. The cup remained.

Tickets and Tauntings

Lies about the barking continued for days. "He's been barking for tow hours," was the extent of the information, and upon daily review of the recorder, there was never more than 45 minutes of sound. Some days there was no barking whatsoever.

One Tuesday morning the expected text came early, at 9 a.m. "He's barking" was the extent of it. My husband called nice neighbor and asked her to put the dogs in the house and close the dog door, locking them in. By 9:20 the dogs had been locked by nice neighbor. About 30 minutes after that, our trusty sound recorder picked up a woman's voice quietly calling, "Pippin...Pippin!"

We had a visit from animal control that day. At 11 a.m. Mrs. Crazy Next Door Neighbor called animal control, told them Pippin had been barking for two hours, and they responded. They always respond, we've been told, even if the calls are false.

We were issued another citation for that call, resulting in a fine unless we decided to fight the charge. Yes, please.

Like Good Neighbors, We Buy a $40 Sound-Activated Recorder

So Pippin was new. And we already had four calls to the police resulting in three citations.

Since the dogs had access to the back yard all day through a dog door, and if Pippin were in fact barking all day, we decided that the right thing to do was to purchase a sound-activated recorder and get to the bottom of all the noise.

A quick trip to the local Radio Shack was yielded just the bounty. A clever little contraption that didn't record unless noise was detected.

On the recorder's first morning with us, we set it out on the patio table around 6 a.m. Around 10 a.m. my husband got the first of the daily text messages. "He's been barking for two hours," they wrote.

We got home and immediately checked the recorder. Just over 41 minutes of recording over a 12 hour period revealed an occasional bark from Pippin, totaling no more than eight minutes. It mostly picked up birds, traffic and other neighborhood dogs. Nothing near two hours worth, however.

The Texts Begin

All I can say is that it's good we have unlimited texting. Because the very next day the texting began.

"He's been barking for to hours," was the first one.

Same with the second one. And the third. And so on.

We had to get to the bottom of this.

Double Dipping

When the police responded to the noise violations, they were technically covering for the sheriff's department animal control division which was closed on the weekend.

So Monday morning animal control came to our house to respond to the weekend calls answered by the police. Nice neighbor saw the animal control officer and again called me. I was at work at this time, so I called my husband who then called nice neighbor back. Nice neighbor walked over to our house and handed the phone to the animal control officer. When my husband asked him who continued to report our dogs for barking, the officer said he was unable to tell him. Nice neighbor mistakenly glanced at the officer's clipboard which unmistakably said the name of Mrs. Crazy Next Door Neighbor. Animal control issued us yet another citation, as a follow up to the ones the police had issued. Three days, three citations.

That evening my husband paid them a visit. He knocked on their door and Mr. CNDN answered. The Mrs. wasn't home. Long story short, Mr. agreed to call my husband when the dogs were out of line rather than involving the police and/or animal control. Problem solved.

Pippin,Supposed Destroyer of All Things Peaceful

Our dear friend had just received confirmation that her visa had been approved and she was moving to London. The UK, however, would not accept her dog, Pippin, because he is mostly Staffordshire terrier and thus considered a bully breed.

We had agreed that when the time came for Raven to go, we would adopt Pippin. And on December 30, the time came.

Pippin and his mama flew from Boston to Phoenix; apart from his initial shyness around our two other dogs, Mulligan and O'Malley, Pippin quickly became a member of the pack.

During Pippin's first weekend with us, my husband and I stayed close to home, not sure how the dogs were getting along and not sure of Pippin's temperament. Saturday night we had dinner at a friend's house, and Sunday we were home the entire day except for a 45 minute span when we went out to grab some lunch.

During that lunch, our neighbors called us. Not the crazy ones, a pair of nice ones who we adore. They said the police were at our house. We immediately drove home, and at the same time, our nice neighbor walked to our house to talk to the officer. The officer explained that someone had reported excessive barking coming from our house. Nice neighbor explained he knew our dogs and had serious doubts that it was our dogs who were barking. Since we weren't home at the time, the officer left a notice and went on his way.

We turned onto our street just as the officer pulled away. Nice neighbor indicated that the officer had left a notice. On our door we found two notices. One from the night before and one from just then. A call to the police the following day revealed several calls. I later located this police record. RP = Reporting Party.

07:44:57 01/02/10 10-00073 ANIMAL PROBLEM W PARAISO LN; ACACIA ACT RIGHT NEXT DOOR TO THIS ADDRESS THERE IS A HUGE DOG BARKING...AND THE RP IS SICK. THE RP DOES NOT WANT ANYONE STOPPING BY THEIR 42.

07:54:14 01/02/10 10-00074 Noise W PARAISO LN; ACACIA E1 UTL RP AT THIS ADDRESS WANTS TO COMPLAIN THAT THE DOG NEXT DOOR KEEPS BARKIMG OFF AND ON..RP DOES NOT WANT CONTACT BECAUSE THEY ARE SICK

21:13:53 01/02/10 10-00097 ANIMAL NOISE W PARAISO LN; ACACIA CLO RP REFUSED SAYING DOGS ARE BARKING AT THIS ADDRESS

14:47:08 01/03/10 10-00124 Barking Dog W PARAISO LN; ACACIA CLO RP SAYS THAT THE DOG AT THIS 42 HAS BEEN BARKING NON STOP FOR 24 HRS.

They were home sick, they told the police, and didn't want anyone to take a report, just wanted to complain. Poor crazy next door neighbors. But three calls in one day? And barking for 24 hours? Since we were home nearly the entire day, that sounds like a false police report to me. Also, please note description of "huge dog." This comes up again later.

A Primer on Madness

We've never been especially friendly with our next door neighbors. They're more the gun-toting, big vehicle-driving, vampire-loving, tacky interior decorating, conservative, tea party movement loving, Hayworth/Palin supporting Republican type. Us? Largely the opposite. We hadn't ever had any problems though. We would wave and make small talk when we were out front together, but there were certainly never any standing invites for dinner.

One day in May we hired some landscapers to clean up our yard; mow, plant a tree, trim back some plants we had neglected and install a drip system in our garden. They came with an SUV pulling a trailer full of equipment and parked in front of our house and got to work. My husband was home that day to give them access to the yard and let them know exactly what we wanted. They had been working for hours when the next door neighbor left her house. She walked to the front of her house, saw the SUV and presumably the Mexican men working at our house, and immediately called the police. She then hopped in her car and sped away.

Not one, but two cruisers showed up. They assessed the situation and said to Mike, "We see this was resolved." She had called in a parking violation, stating she was unable to move her vehicle from her driveway. They saw her vehicle was gone and figured the SUV had been relocated. However the SUV never moved because one of the landscapers had taken his personal vehicle to a convenience store down the street to get drinks for the rest of the crew. He inadvertently had the SUV keys in his pocket. Her driveway was not blocked, and she was easily able to get her car out.

My husband, with not much else to do that day, followed up with the police as to why two cruisers were dispatched for a parking violation. Dispatch had no record of the call. It appeared as if she made a personal call to one or more of her officer friends.

What I failed to mention is that she was volunteering as a sheriff's posse member at the time. The pay wasn't great, but oh...the benefits! After that the waving and small talk came to a crashing halt. Her choice, not ours. But we didn't exactly mind.