A Bad Story Without An Ending . . .

This is a story that might be a bit long but we'll try to keep it as short as possible.  And we have no idea how it ends.  Look at the photo below.  There are a few things we will tell you.

The fence is at the bottom of our hill in our back yard.  We specifically want you to notice the little structure with a blue tarp on it.  We have a VERY good view of this house.  These photos were taken from our living room window.

Here is a close up.  We named the man Josh, after Josh Powell who was a weird evil man who killed his wife and 2 boys (and himself).  There are actually 3 dogs in this story.  The dog you see has another sibling and they look very similar.  We call them "The Mayas" because all we ever heard them called was Maya and we don't know which one it was.  The other one we call Blackie for obvious reasons.  We don't see Blackie very often.  Blackie is VERY old and arthritic.

There has been a change at this house.  When our pawrents built our house, this house was occupied by 2 parents and 3 teenagers.  There is a LONG history of them not caring for the house or yard and the city OFTEN has to force them to cut weeds 3 feet high in the yard (oh the stories we could tell!).  But a year ago last November, the father suddenly died of a heart attack.  The mother (who was very strange on her best day) said she wanted to sell the house.  We learned this from the loud voices.  But the kids, who were adults by this time, would not allow her to sell it.  So the mother disappeared and the house was occupied by at least 2 adult kids who continued to not care for it.  Now, it appears only 1 adult child is there (a daughter) and a man is living with her, Josh.

All these years, the family has always done the same thing; one by one they put the dogs out onto the little deck (on a short rope or chain) to go to the bathroom.  But now that the daughter and Josh are there, Josh built this "dog house" and "dog run" about a week ago.  You can see he was clueless, or maybe just cheap (or both).  The fence around it is just chicken wire and the dogs pulled it down the first 10 minutes they were in it.  The Mayas keep getting out so Josh put them on a rope inside the little pen.

You might be wondering about Blackie.  Well, we are too.  You see, it is very difficult for him to move and the other day Josh put him outside on the little deck and Blackie got off the deck to go to the bathroom.  When Josh came out to get Blackie he was handling him a bit rough.  A dog that old and frail needs helped, not tugged and yanked by his collar to move him around.  When mom saw how he handled Blackie, she decided to call him Josh because she said it told a lot about what kind of person he was.

It isn't unusual to not see Blackie for many days.  We assume the dogs are not licensed.  The city only allows 2 dogs per house so we know for sure all three could not be licensed.  We assume that they have not been checked by a dogtur and that Blackie gets no medicine to make his life better.  We just can't see them spending the money for a dogtur.  The family has not handled the dogs roughly (until mom saw Josh the other day).  It wasn't animal abuse but it was wrong.

We aren't sure when it is time to do something or what that something actually would be.  But we are watching very closely . . .


Murphy

Note:  If you noticed the 2 kennels, just prior to building the pen, they tried putting the Mayas on the deck with kennels.  Mom thinks new work schedules must keep them away and they are trying to figure out what to do since the dogs can't stay indoors all day.