Things With The Neighbours Have Become Heated

Neighbors, Non-Dialogue, Pets & Animals | Friendly | March 7, 2017

My mom had a black lab as a kid in the 1980s. This being the 1980s, people don’t know what we know now about pet care, so it is perfectly acceptable to leave a dog chained up in the yard unsupervised for long periods of time. My mom’s parents are no exception in spite of the dog being a master escape artist, and they find a moderately sized, sturdy tree to tie the dog to every afternoon that seems to keep the dog from escaping.

My mom’s neighbor is also no exception, with their purebred golden retriever. Since the neighbors like to participate in dog shows, they aren’t allowed to get the dog fixed and so have to contend with heat (which is essentially dog mating periods and very messy, painful, and loud). Not wanting a big mess in the house, they just chain the dog up outside until heat ends.

This catches the attention of pretty much every male dog in the neighborhood, but due to being kept chained up, they aren’t able to act on desire. That is, until my mom’s lab figures out how to use the friction from moving the chain up and down to saw down the tree and escape. He comes back home after a few hours.

And that’s the story of how the purebred show golden retriever gave birth to a litter of black puppies. The neighbors refuse to speak with my mom’s family after that, but apparently take a lesson and keep the dog indoors when she is in heat. So do my grandparents, who chain the dog to an anchor fit for a barge.

That’s not the end of it. A few months after the incident, my grandmother wakes up to find the outside door open and screen door torn to pieces. She initially assumes a robbery occurred and calls my grandfather in a panic. Upon realizing that nothing has been stolen, they figure out that the lab escaped. So, my grandfather goes out to search for the dog.

He eventually found the lab outside the neighbor’s house. It turns out the neighbor’s golden was once again in heat, and gave doggy encouragement throughout as the lab tried to claw through the wall shingle by shingle, in a manner that was slow but effective without injuring him or even damaging the shingles that much. Horrified, my grandfather grabbed him, took him home, and hastily tried to stick the lost shingles back on the house to the best of his ability. In all likelihood, though, the neighbors knew and any hope of reconciliation was lost.

This story is part of our Golden Retriever roundup!