That's some toothpick!

This past Sunday was the start to the joys of home ownership. I remember waking up at about 1:00 am, 3:30 am and 5:45 am.

The first two times I was burning up. I still haven't quite figured out why this is happening (to both of us sometimes) since we have the air conditioning turned cooler when we're sleeping. Maybe there isn't enough airflow, and it just feels warm. I guess we'll need to try turning the ceiling fan on.

The last time if I even remember correctly was the sound of something scratching at our or our neighbors fence gate. I could tell it was the gate, because the latch was making a little noise.

Well, it turns out that our neighbor P to our right (when facing our house) had gone out of town for the day and his two dogs broke chewed through their fence which is also our fence and proceeded to break through the other side of our fence as well which also belongs to our neighbor H on our left.

Once we woke up, we soon realized what had happened and we needed to get in gear. It was time to find the dogs, make sure they were safe and then notify the neighbors. J found the two dogs out in front of our house. Thankfully our street isn't busy, so they weren't in much danger. We coaxed them through the house and into our backyard so they weren't roaming free. I got them plenty of water, and they both started gulping it down. Poor babies! We also left a note for P, the dogs owner and then talked to H to let her know what had happened.

[Um… hi we're your new neighbors.]

Before too long, the female dog had crawled back into her yard *through* the hole in the fence. We left them alone, and the more timid male also made his way back through. At that point J took some of the rolled up carpet we removed from our house, and put it over the holes in both sides of the fence. We didn't really want the dogs to get loose again, and it worked.

I still can't believe that the dogs chewed… yes chewed through the fence. I even saw the male dog grab part of one wood planks and pull upward with his mouth to break it off – this was after we got them back in their yard and had covered the two holes. I was dumbfounded! I'm standing there looking right at the dog and the fence and he proceeded to tear more of the wood off.


I told J what was going on and the following conversation went something like this:

J: "The dog is chewing on the wood?"

Me: "Um yes. Look."

J: "Didn't they make that hole earlier?"

Me: "Yes, but watch. Seriously, just be still and watch."

J: "No way! The dog just pulled another piece of the wood plank off with it's mouth!"

Me: "Yep."

That evening we came home after running some errands, and our neighbor P was fixing the hole in the fence. We went out to talk to him, since we were only able to leave a note on his door. P was extremely apologetic. J and I told him we weren't mad and we were more concerned that the dogs were okay. Actually, the whole thing was more frustrating than upsetting. Obviously P's dogs have some behavioral issues if they dig and literally chew through the fence.

I'm just glad we met both P and H before all of this happened. We really wanted to get to know our new neighbors and start things off on a good foot. I don't think we're going to let a couple of dogs mess that up.

I guess that depends on the dogs.

[grin]