Apologetic Chaos

Alex loves loves loves talking to our neighbors.  And not just the immediate neighbors.  Pretty much anyone that walks past our house is fair game.  Our street is part of the city bike path, so we gets us a lot of foot traffic.  And in turn, Alex gets a lot of conversations.  They may be one sided, favoring the rambling child side, but conversations nonetheless.

The other facet of having so many people walk past involves our asshole of a dog.  She loves or could care less about 47% of the people and dogs that walk by.  But that other 53% is suspect.  How dare they walk next to her fence?!  Don't they know she owns this sidewalk, and sometimes the sidewalk across the street, and for SURE the actual street when a skateboarder is making his or her way past our house?!  And apparently that 53% of the neighborhood population needs to be told they suck at maximum barking volume and maximum running velocity.  We have a very well worn dirt race track about 6 inches away from the fence.  I'm guessing there's a fair amount of dog spittle on the fence too, I just choose not to look.

I try my best to catch her before the outburst starts, but my best doesn't prove to be enough most of the time.  Not to mention, she loves being outside, so she is out there a lot when I am not.  But, if I'm inside and I hear her going ballistic, I usually run out there, try to grab her on one of her manic passes and tell the unsuspecting neighbor I am so sorry my dog sucks.

Alex has seen this happen time and time again.  So now, as soon as the first bark leaves her little doggie lips, he starts trying to accomplish the impossible task of making her shut the hell up.  But obviously, he is rarely successful.  So what ends up happening is ridiculous.  The whole time the dog is going batshit insane along the fence line, Alex is chasing her, alternating between yelling at her and yelling, "Sorry 'bout that!" to the neighbor.  If the neighbor acknowledges his efforts, he lassos them into a conversation about his dog that may or may not end in him telling them that she jumped over the fence the night before (she didn't).  If they ignore him, he just keeps repeating "Sorry 'bout that!" until they are out of sight and then looks at me all defeated and complains that his neighbor wouldn't talk to him.

Total control of my surroundings.