Fences, Dogs, ETC

I think Murr and I bought this place in Kyle in 1996 but don't hold me to that date. It seems the years go by too fast and I suffer from CRS so that's close but may not be exact. We have a little over 2 acres and when we bought the place it was pretty much in the country. Never did we realize that we were soon to be surrounded by huge subdivisions. But I digress.

When we bought there was no fencing around our property except for two houses that butt up to the sides of our property, but that wasn't a problem because our first baby, Penny, was already pretty old and was used to being on a chain when outside. (She was a dog so don't call CPS!) After the first year or so of being here we noticed that our back-d0or neighbors had several children, which had several friends, who used our yard as a short cut back and forth to each other's houses. This probably wouldn't have bothered me too much if these kids had any manners. I could be out in my garden, which is right next to the path they chose to use as their shortcut, and they would walk by and not say a single thing to me even when I said hello to them. I considered this rude behavior on their part, but pretty much ignored it and tried to get them to at least talk to me on their daily excursions. Sometimes they did, but most of the time they did not. I guess I was one of those "strangers" they weren't supposed to talk to even though they were on MY property. This went on for about a year and then the property was sold and the kids were gone.

By this time I'm thinking to myself good riddance. Then one day the new neighbors decided to use the same kid's shortcut with his truck and left deep tire ruts in the yard. Shortly after discovering the ruts I walked over to their back window and gave them a "one-finger salute" and got on the phone with a fencing company. Very shortly after that I had a new 8 foot fence between me and that offending neighbor, and a ranch-style fence around the rest of the property. Very shortly after the new fence we had a new baby girl, Lindsay, lost Penny to old age, and then a couple of years after that thought Lindsay needed to have a dog in her life so we got PJ, which we completely relied on the fence to keep him in. He's one of those dogs that sees an opening in the fence or gate and runs right out and you can't call him back in. Please don't ask Murr about this problem because despite all the time and money I went through in obedience training with PJ this is the one thing I couldn't teach him and it's quite a little sore spot between us.

To make a long story short, that 8 foot fence is now falling down and is in need of major repairs, but that's not the problem of the hour.

As I said, when we bought here there were only two fences already in place. One of those fences is holding up nicely, but the other one we've had to wire up a couple of times in the last year or so to try to keep it up. When we first had to do a wire job on it I called the neighbor and her son helped Murr wire it back together. Just a patch job I should say. About 6 months ago we had to do another patch job on it and I called the neighbor and left a message about maybe getting together and splitting the cost of replacing the fence. Needless to say I never heard from her.

This afternoon I didn't get home until 7 p.m. because of jury trial in my court (and Murr had a full day in court too -- he got picked for jury duty in district court -- hee-hee, welcome to my world, Murr -- I will report on that later) and I discovered that I had an extra dog in my yard. It looked like the dog that belonged behind that broken down fence so I went to check it out and sure enough another section has blown totally down. I have left another message for the woman, but haven't heard from her and it was too late to go knocking at her door.

I don't have time to deal with this. Tomorrow is Mom's heart catheterization (sp?sorry I'm brain dead at the moment) test to check for blockage. My plan was to pack a bag and go to San Antonio early in the morning, and depending on what they decide to do either come home or spend the night.

Poor PJ will just have to be left tied up in the yard all day or left in his inside or outside kennel, I guess. Can you guess what I'll be spending my stimulus check from Mr. Bush on?