We Miss our Dogs, Jake and Hershey

I need to vent a little. When my husband moved to Washington State after being hired by Boeing, he rented a house through a management company with a yard, because the place accepted animals. We had two dogs. A beautiful, Chocolate Lab and a black and white, Border Collie. They were our family, a huge part of it and they were loved dearly. Our dogs never ran loose in the community and had never gotten out of our yard, but they did bark at anyone who went by the wood fence.

The owners of the house we rented also owned the house next door, and a family member of theirs went over daily to work out of the house. Other family members came over periodically. I met them one day with the owner when I was out mowing the yard when they got my attention. I stopped mowing and called my husband, because they wanted to meet him too. They seemed nice and we even exchanged phone numbers. They asked us to keep an eye on their place as well as they were gone a lot. We agreed.

Well, it wasn't a couple days later that that the management company called to let us know that the father of the owner been had been at the house next door and had come over to our fence and reached over the five foot fence trespassing, to try to pet our dogs. This kind of action would have provoked our dogs even more. The old man claimed that our Border Collie bit him and that he had to have stitches. We were at work when this supposedly happened.

We were surprised, that anyone would be trying to pet barking dogs, because that is what our dogs would have been doing, the people next door were strangers to my dogs. We felt bad for the old man, but at the same time we were frustrated and confused by his actions. The management lady said that the guy knew he should have known better than to do what he did and he was in the wrong. The old man understood, that dogs protect their property and go into protective mode when their space is invaded, especially when the owners are not around. They talked about it and and my husband said that he'd put up beware of dog signs, so people would be more aware.

Now, we didn't want anyone else to try to reach over the fence to pet the dogs and my husband put up a fence within the fence to contain the dogs in a smaller yard to keep them away from the five foot fence, so other people who got the bright idea to try to pet our dogs couldn't.

Over a week later, we came home from errands and noticed an envelope stuck in a crack on the garage in the corner and opened it. It was dated two days before. The envelope contained a notice for us to get rid of Jake, or vacate the premises within ten days of the date on the notice, because Jake was a menace to the neighborhood. That they couldn't have a vicious animal around because there was a day care in one of the houses just down the street. The owners were having a fit over their father getting bitten and having to have stitches. The Management company highlighted a clause in in the pet agreement, where the animals could not run loose in the yard, they had to be tied on leashes at all times. Are you kidding me??? Why have a freaking yard with a five foot fence for animals if you had to have the dogs on leashes the whole time. I thought it was pretty convenient for them to point this out at this time. Had we known this was in the fine print, we would never have signed the contract. Though our lawyer did say, that the management company did not follow the law in our eviction and if we had chosen to fight it, because of a few other things that were not done we would have won and as far as the dogs having to be on the leash in a fenced yard, well that is a joke.

We were very surprised to say the least and extremely upset. We had eight days to figure something out. The management lady, became snotty and very hard nosed, telling us that our dog should not have bitten anyone when my husband called to try to talk about the notice. Her comment was not all dogs bite. Well, what if an intruder was entering the yard? When my husband told the management lady that we did not get the notice, until two days later, because we didn't see it stuck in the crack of the garage, it didn't matter, we still had to do something.

We knew at that moment we couldn't stay, no matter what we we did. It would only be a matter of time that they would be complaining about Hershey, our other dog, or something else they didn't like that we did, since a family member was always there looking over the fence at what we were doing and getting into our business.

We ended up giving our dogs to the humane society. A no kill shelter. They assured us that they would find homes for our dogs. We looked into someone taking the dogs until we could get another place, but nothing panned out. We also moved into an apartment and put most of our belongings in storage.

We miss our dogs. We hope and pray that good people have adopted them and will love them as we have.