Dear neighbor who recently acquired the bullmastiff,
I would like to congratulate you on your adoption/purchase of the full-grown adult bullmastiff. A bullmastiff is a beautiful, regal breed, and one that I very much admire. I commend you on your addition to your family. I haven’t spent much time with him, but judging from his deep, clear, resounding bark, he appears to be in good health.
He also appears to be a bit of a night owl…. And my, he is an opinionated dog, isn’t he? My husband and I listened to his healthy, full-throated, deeply echoing opinions all night long. It has been awhile since I’ve had the pleasure of hearing such a beautiful, bass bark. On a side note, did you know that my bedroom happens to be positioned about 10 feet away from your backyard? For all that Orange County has lovely weather, it does feel a bit cramped from time to time, doesn’t it? Even with all the doors and windows shut, our location still managed to feel like we had front row seats to a concert. Judging from the neighbor who hollered out, “SHUT UP!” at approximately 3:30 in the morning, we were not the only ones enjoying his nightly serenade.
At any rate, relying on my years of experience with dogs and a recent viewing of 101 Dalmatians, I thought you might be interested to know that I have decoded the message your new family member spent several hours trying to communicate last night. The rough (ruff?) translation appears below:
“Dear new family,
As you may have noticed from my impeccable breeding, I am designed to be a family dog. I find it quite distressing to be separated from you, as it is my duty guard and protect you. I have been trying to tell you this for several hours now, and I wanted to let you know that I find myself growing depressed and lonely. In fact, I find myself so desperately lonely that if this continues on a long term basis, I’ll have no other recourse than to escape from my yard, jump into the small, beige sedan of your neighbor’s vehicle, and force her to drive me to an animal rescue she knows of that is several hours away. None of want to deal with this sort of inconvenience, so please: let me in tonight.”
While there might be a few glitches in the translation of your new pet’s message, but I wanted to let you know that I’m pretty sure I was able to understand the gist of it. In my experience, dogs of this nature tend to be pretty single-minded and hardheaded about following through on their threats, so I thought you might appreciate the head’s up.
Sincerely,
Your neighbor with the small, beige sedan
a word:
“benedryl.”
slide a couple of those little pink jobbies into a hot dog and toss it over the fence.
barring that, take a few of those little pink jobbies for yourselves. but don’t drive the beige car until they’ve worn off, okay?
I feel your pain. I lived in a house once where the next door neighbour had two barking dogs. One was a small yappy dog, that barked ALL night and the other was a rotteweiler, who picked up the slack every time the yappy dog took a breath. I was honestly contemplating all kinds of nasty things that the innocent, if poorly trained and paid attention to, dog didn’t deserve.
I feel your pain as well. My husband and I live in an apartment, and two of the new neighbors in our building have dogs. One is a fluffy little white dog that barks incessantly each and every time we enter and leave our apartment. The other has a Boston terrier and a bulldog, the latter of which advanced at me while the owner chirped “O he won’t hurt you…”
It now smells like dog pee immediately outside our door, and one of them left a pile of dog crap on the narrow patch of grass in front of the building.
Dogs can be nice, but when their owners are in considerate it tends to create a lot of aggravation.
A “couple” benedryl? For his size and weight, you’d need about 8 of them. And if you do it often enough, it loses his effectiveness. Seriously, 8! The dosing is 1 person tablet per 12.5lbs of dog.
So, it’s probably much easier and more cost effective for you to take the pink jobbies. 🙂
Beings as he’s a mastiff, there’s no “telling” him, there’s only “convincing” him he wants to. Believe me, I know. I have a Mastidane!
Two words. Code Enforcement.
Don’t even say that as a joke. My neighbors son came to me a week or so ago and asked what he should do because he fed their dog some benadryl and some IB profin for whatever reason. I got the dog to vomit it out, so going to the vet was pointless. But I felt like kicking the kid in the head. I don’t much like people that kill dogs.