I am FUMING right now. So my neighbors got a puppy a few months ago. For most of the day they ignore the puppy and let her roam free around the neighborhood. Sometimes she’ll come over into my yard looking for trouble. It wasn’t a big deal when she was small, but now she’s bigger, not trained or socialized at all, and she’s becoming a nuisance. She has chewed up one of my hiking boots that I left on the patio because it got muddy, pulled my clean laundry off the clothesline and torn it apart, and she carries trash from other people’s yards and brings it here to rip it up leaving a huge mess that I have to spend a few hours every week cleaning up. But today she did something much, much worse. She got to my dolls.
This evening I was out in the back of the house picking dandelions, admiring the lilacs and clipping some to put in the house, and watching the little hummingbird moths that pollinate the flowers. I had the front door open but the screen door shut so I could get the nice breeze going through the house. For the fifteen minutes I was out there, the puppy clawed through the screen in the door, came into my house, and went straight to my doll displays, dragging a bunch of things outside to chew on them there. She took Kaya, ripped off her head, ripped her dress and belt and necklace off, chewed on her face, took both of Kaya’s dogs, ripped apart the puppy Tatlo that my sister needle felted for me, took Caroline’s calf, took Josefina’s baby goat, and ripped Josefina’s sheepskin into pieces. I caught her right when she was dragging my big life-sized stuffed dog outside, so luckily there’s not much damage to it.
Worst of all. She took both of Kirsten’s cats and completely obliterated them. There’s no way to put them back together. They’re destroyed. My Kirsten’s cats were the original Pleasant Company ones that were made of rabbit fur. They were special to me because I’ve had them since I first got Kirsten when I was eight. Kaya can probably be fixed, since it looks like mostly just scratches rather than chewed bits. But I’m still so upset that I can’t look extensively at her or any of this right now. Her necklace is unbroken, her shoes are still on her feet, and her belt is okay. Her deerskin dress is mostly intact, but is missing one of the bead/elk tooth decorations. I might have heard it fall on the kitchen floor when I brought everything in, but I’ll have better luck looking for tomorrow when I’m less upset and have some daylight. Caroline’s calf is filthy and probably just needs cleaning.
While I was trying to pick up all the stuff off the ground, the puppy kept lunging at my face and biting my hands and trying to grab all of it from my arms, and in doing so she got a lock onto my upper arm and yanked it hard. Didn’t break the skin but will probably be badly bruised tomorrow. I forgive her since she’s just a puppy and it’s not her fault that she isn’t given attention and training that she needs. So of course I was gentle when I escorted her off of my property. I’m far more angry at the people who aren’t doing anything to teach her good dog manners. This really is inexcusable.
