Dog's best friend?

This morning's blog is more of an example of how we're not going to be.

Have you ever had a neighbour who refuses to cut his grass or throw his trash out on garbage day? Have you watched as the derelicts parked in your neighbour's drive turned into a Holiday Inn for the refuse of the neighbourhood? Have you always known the dandelions which creep into your yard every spring, belonged to your neighbour? Have you wondered why he kept dogs?
It couldn't be to give an animal a home and complete a family because family members care for each other, and this neighbour of yours, he doesn't care about anybody.
When I was in my 20s, a friend of mine had a neighbour similar to the one described. She, an animal lover, tried to ignore this man's boorish behaviour. She tried to ignore the plight of two large breed crosses.
She worked nights and would often see the animals out in the yard when she was leaving for work around 10:30 p.m. Through the long shifts, she would worry about them, and if the weather turned bad, she almost always cried.
After 12 hours, she would return home and look out her bedroom window. There they were, still outside, still in the same spot. Impossible, she would say, and then, with the ceremony of the exhausted, she would crawl into bed, place her eye shades over her eyes and sink into sleep. Mere minutes later, a cacophony of sound, the dogs wanted in.
Yet it wasn't to be.
After days, weeks and months of the routine, my friend was at her limit. She didn't mind weeds, and she had an appreciation for all sorts of artwork, including driveway art, which was what she assumed her neighbour was intending when he abandoned his cars. The dogs, though, that she couldn't ignore.
One day, after a particulary vocal mid-morning howl, she ripped her eye patch off. Wearing nothing but an old t-shirt and a modest pair of briefs, she marched to her neighbour's. She said she saw nothing on her walk across the drive, she said she felt only rage, and if she could, she would have tied that dog owner to a tree and let him sit on frozen grass and then sizzle under the sun. She would let him howl.
Instead, and with only the barest civility, she uttered the words she had been choking on for too long.
"You aren't fit to look after any living creature. I've called the cops and the city. Your dogs are leaving and with any luck, you're going too."
Within a week, the next door neighbour's yard was clean, the trash was picked up and the howling dogs were a memory.
The best part, though, was the "For Sale" sign that bloomed later on his front yard.