It's Never Boring In Our Neighborhood!

I love our house.  I even love where our house is situated in our town.  We are about two blocks from my parents & only about 5 minutes away from Mike's parents.  Unless there is a train.  Then it's a whole different story, but either way, I love where we live.

There are a couple of drawbacks, though.  Our house is situated in a funny way on our block.  We are the only house that faces the side street so we kind of don't really have next door neighbors.  The front of our house faces the side of the house across the street.  The houses to the east & north face the back & side of our house.  It's just kind of strange & as a result we haven't gotten to know our neighbors well.  

In the course of our almost three years in our little house we have had two neighbors with pit bulls.  The first pit has moved away & the other pit is still a puppy (but he sure doesn't look like one!).  Our neighbors got this new pit just a few months ago.  Since then we have noticed a lot more barking & growling, mostly done when this pit bull plays with the other dog that the neighbor family already had.  Most of the time we try not to pay any attention to the noise.  However, I got home from work on Monday & the noise was hard to ignore.  We looked out of the kitchen window & this is what we saw:

Ever heard the expression 'tiny but mighty'?  This little chihuahua really had no fear of those bigger dogs.  The pit is the brown dog in the forefront.  He had been barking so much that he had gone totally hoarse.  And the spit...it was disgusting.  He was foaming at the mouth he was so agitated!

 And little chihuahua man put these guys through their paces!  

He was running back & forth...

 and then back & forth again!  

His little snarly barks could hardly be heard over the big dogs.

 I wish I was this fearless!

 And then he did the unthinkable.  

Mr. Chihuahua marked his territory on that telephone pole.  

He hiked his little leg & I thought that the pit bull was going to have convulsions.  

 That little convulsive fit was all it took for him to figure out he could do this.  He climbed up the corner of that fence & was outside of his yard before he knew he'd done it.  It made me laugh right out loud because he hit the ground & then looked over both shoulders really quickly almost like he was thinking, "How did I get out here?  Did anyone see how I did that?"  Thankfully, Mr. Chihuahua was already gone.  

Mike & I ran from the kitchen window to the front door so we could see what would happen next.  Mike kept saying, "That pit will have him down in one bite!"  I was pretty sure I didn't want to see that happen but I couldn't help myself from peeking out the windows!

This is our view from the front door right now.  Remember how I said that our house faces the side of another house?  This is the little driveway area they have behind their house.  I'm not sure who is living there right now (if anyone).  All I know is that just about every day a man in carharts, toting Mr. Chihuahua, drives this tractor & flatbed trailer to the house.  He lets Mr. Chihuahua roam around while he loads furniture onto the trailer & then they drive away.  I don't think it's slow motion burglary but who knows?!  It's the oddest thing, for sure.

Anyway, when we got to the front of the house to see what was happening with the dogs, we saw the tractor driver just pulling out with a fresh load.  He scooped Mr. Chihuahua up, zipped him into his carharts, hollered at the pit & drove away.  We were so glad that Mr. Chihuahua did not become Big Doggie Dinner!

But now we have this pit roaming around free.  He didn't seem to be a runner.  He kept sniffing around within a one block radius.  I thought our neighbors were home & I wanted to go over & tell them their dog was out but I couldn't get out of our house without him running at me rehearsing his barking & growling routine.  I ended up calling animal control (where I was sent directly to voicemail, go figure) because it was right at the time when all of the neighborhood kids were getting off of the bus & walking home.  We only have one or two kids in the neighborhood that we regularly see walking home from the bus.  We camped out on the porch until we could see that they got home safely & then we called it a day on dog watch detail.  

Later as I was fixing dinner I looked out of the kitchen window just in time to see our neighbor lead the dog back into their yard & then on in the house.  It's funny, but I saw her look over both shoulders, too...almost as if she was thinking, "How did he get out?  Did anyone see how he did that?"

Like I said, it's never boring in our neighborhood!