The Complaints Department Should have Been Closed!

In early August, our neighbour shot Panda, our Border Collie.

Panda is fine, well, as fine as he will ever be as the bullet has caused nerve damage in his shoulder and there is a good chance he will now get around on three legs for the rest of his life. Time will tell.

We have only seen the neighbour once since that day. He turned up one morning at 7.30 am a few days after the event. Honestly, doesn’t he have a clock in his house? I was still in my Winnie the Pooh pyjamas and my hair had a very attractive Crusty the Clown look about it. I’ve decided he lives too close.

I didn’t speak to him. I had stepped through the laundry door heading through to the kitchen when I saw him. I stepped back into the laundry and called Mr D.

Mr D went outside with the neighbour and told him that he was to leave our property and any future visits would be reported to the Police as trespassing. He hadn’t popped over to see how Panda was by the way, he had come over to ask if he could shoot an injured Roo on our side of the fence. Trigger happy! Mr D went looking for the Roo later and couldn’t find it.

Anyway, yesterday on my way down the driveway (off to work), I spotted a vehicle headed towards me so I pulled over and waited for it to get a bit closer. It didn’t take long to work out that it was the council ranger.

Peter the ranger is quite a friendly guy considering the job he has to do. It’s a job that is probably up there with ‘Brown Bombers. So of course I am wondering why the visit. He informs me that a complaint had been made about our dogs.

Here’s the funny thing about complaints about you (or your dogs in this case) to the council. You are not allowed to know who the complainant is and you are not allowed to know the details of the complaint. I ask you, what is the point of that? How do you fix something if you don’t know what you have done? Thank you privacy laws. We are living in a world gone MAD!

Peter did give me a few snippets. Allegedly our dogs had killed several ‘domestic fowl’ and a poddy lamb so I knew straight away where the complaint had come from. All of this allegedly happened yesterday morning. I am wondering how our dogs managed such a feat. When they are not with us now, they are on the chain or in the laundry. And where is the blood, feathers and wool from all that carnage?

One thing that concerned me was the number of times Peter asked if I was sure we only had two dogs? Yes, I’m very sure. As much as I love dogs, two is more than enough. The trouble is, I was so mad (about to cry mad) that I didn’t have the presence of mind to ask how many dogs the complainant thought we had.

So as a result of yesterdays events, we didn’t even take the dogs with us to do fencing today. They have been on the chain ALL day apart from a walk down the driveway with Cleo on a lead and Panda hobbling along with us on his three legs.

Mr D and I have never had trouble with neighbours. I mean NEVER!

We live on 100 acres with two working dogs who will be stuck on a chain all day, every day from now on. We can walk them, for sure, however it’s not the same. They need to run.

I guess we should be grateful he picked up the phone before picking up his rifle. Someone else has been spared.

Have you had an experience with a bad neighbour? How did you deal with it?

Mrs D x