A New Gated Community

Mia and I went for our walk early this morning, well before the sun could top the surrounding mountains and begin roasting the already parched earth. The moisture coming off the newly-watered lawns was the perfect complement to a beautiful morning in the neighborhood.

Beautiful that is until the two pit bulls came charging at us from behind! One of them leaped at Mia from the left, and she and I jumped away from the dog as one, right into the other dog, which was covering the attack from the right side. I always carry a rock and threw it as hard as I could at the attacking dogs, hitting one in the head. He yelped, turned, and ran away, followed by his buddy.

Earlier in the week, Mia and I had to deal with two dogs out for a walk with their owner, dogs that were not on leashes and came right at us as we walked on the sidewalk. Again, I threw my rock at the attacking dogs and when the man walking the dogs yelled at me, I forcefully told him his dogs need to be on leashes.

Suddenly, “no speak English.”

Really?

I’ll have to remember that: if I don’t want to follow the law, I can suddenly develop the inability to speak English and get a free pass? I don’t think so. It doesn’t take a command of the English language to understand that you don’t allow your dogs to run loose, especially when your dogs attack the other dogs, the ones on leashes being walked by their owners.

Every morning there are piles of dog poop on my lawn, some piles pretty small and others quite large, but all of which I have to clean up. My dog is kept in a fenced yard because that’s the law: dogs must be contained at all times. However, evidently the law only applies to people who speak English because all the Mexican families on my street—and in my neighborhood—allow their dogs to run wild. I spray them with water, I throw rocks at them, I tell my neighbors to keep their dogs in their yards—but I speak English, and the laws don’t apply to people who “no speak English.”

Posted pictographs have taken the place of written messages because so many people cannot read English, but it doesn’t take either a picture or a printed message to understand that dogs should not roam the streets. Of course, in third-world nations, dogs are the garbage cans, the animals that eat all the left-over food scraps, gnaw and bury the bones, and keep their territory safe by attacking intruders. I find the remains of cats, small dogs and rabbits on my lawn as often as I find the piles of poop because the dogs are doing what wild dogs do—foraging for and killing food.

I’m glad I don’t have small children because I doubt that a feral dog knows the difference between a small animal and a small child.

If we were living in that kind of unstructured environment, with lots of open land for an animal to hunt and protect, I could understand the need to allow the dogs to forage for food and to attack interlopers to their territory, but this is an established community in the US of A! The sidewalks are there for all to share, not as territories for uncontrolled dogs to protect from innocent residents out taking a walk! The yards belong to the people who live in the houses, not to packs of wild animals who want to mark that territory as their own by peeing, pooping, and leaving the remains of their kills as warning to other packs of wild dogs.

In an effort to balance the city budget, two important positions were eliminated: code enforcement and animal control. Since that decision was made about 18 months ago, the spread of graffiti and the increase in packs of wild dogs have gone unchecked, both of which conditions create concern for a community trying to establish itself as a credible area for families to live. At this point, it’s just easier for newcomers to purchase a home in a gated community than it is to deal with the issues outside the gates. I’m not sure I blame them for that decision, especially if they have small children who could be at risk from both the gangs and the feral dogs.

There’s no way I can afford to relocate to a formal gated community, so I’ll have to create my own gated community by fencing in the yard. I’ll make the call tomorrow.