Last night, a family in our compound hired a four-man mariachi band to play for a dinner party of theirs. A party of 10 people.
Sometimes I think we might be on the poor end of the compound families, and not just because we don't dust our car regularly. But now I know.
But here's something low-rent that some neighbors here do and we don't: let their dogs bark on and on. We live next to a super-wealthy family that has a large Labrador. They never take it out of their tiny yard to run and play with other dogs, so sometimes it barks and barks when it's outside. She's probably begging other dogs to come and spring her from prison. The neighbors say they never expected her to grow so big. Whatever.
When their dog gets to barking next door, it sets ours off. As does the outdoor toy poodle at #13 and the 3 outdoor dogs across the park. Imagine how fun it must be for 3 dogs to live in a yard that's about 7' by 40' -- they never ever go out either -- and you can guess how much they bark. Off and on all day and night. I was up at 3 a.m. once, and that gang of 3 were yelling away. How the neighbors on either side of them can stand it, I can't figure out.
So when these 5 dogs go to DEFCON 5, we can't get ours to shut up. Sadly, this now goes on in our house day and night. Hope we get to move on before it's too late.
You can't blame the dogs, though. The ones in our neighborhood must be bored and lonely. The 3 across the park from us live surrounded by a 2-story townhouse, a 20' wall and a 15' wall, and only have a 3' view on the world, through an iron fence. The two that can see over the bottom of the fence have a view of the world, that is. The shortest one can see
nada.
Some of the owners in the neighborhood around the corner, the one that has a big park along one end, just let their dogs loose. That park is nice, but has broken glass in it and the area is more urban than suburban. And the owners don't supervise their dogs. So what's to prevent those dogs from being hit by cars, stepping on glass, getting bit or pregnant by others (because few spay and neuter here) running loose?
Nada.
There is a pair of Great Danes in a house in that neighborhood. When they come out, (to leave giant poops in the park, of course) you can see they have sores on their elbows and knees, as if they live on concrete or tile most of the time. When a new batch of big, loose males came over to investigate our females one day, we stopped taking them around the corner for exercise. It was always depressing, anyway.
Now we drive 30 minutes each way once a week to a big park in El Paso, where there is no broken glass but no longer any dog runs, either. We can only speed-walk them there on the leash. No more off-leash freedom. They're both getting a little fat from the Juarez lifestyle.
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Labels: Culture
