Being Neighborly

Yesterday around 2:00 pm, I realized the neighbor's dog had been barking for awhile. Our neighbor shows giant poodles, (and lots of 'em), so it's not unusual to hear barking. The reason I took notice was because it sounded like a puppy and it was only one dog, so I looked out our upstairs window that looks down into his yard to check it out.

There was a solid black puppy in a wire kennel with no water and no shade. I watched him for a minute and he was jumping up, then was trying to lay down on the cement, but it was too hot on his little tummy. He was running around I think because it was too hot to stay in one place. It seemed out of the ordinary for him to be out there, but I didn't want to butt in to someone else's business. I decided to wait a few minutes. He kept on and no one came out.

I knocked on the door thinking maybe he had put him out there and forgotten about him. I still felt uneasy because I didn't want him thinking I was a nosy neighbor. Well, there was no answer, but I did hear the rest of the crew barking inside when I knocked. I went to the other neighbor, who works from home and was the former HOA president thinking maybe he knew his name or had a phone number for him.

He called the management company as I went back over to check on the dog. When I peeked through the fence, it was laying down panting really hard, so I got a bowl of water and went into the backyard. He drank for awhile and then I got him out and sat under a tree for a minute. I took him inside our house to cool him down and see if the neighbor had called back. Sure enough, he had gotten ahold of him at work and he was coming straight home.

When he came to the door, he was just beside himself. He felt terrible and had in fact forgotten that he left him outside. His workplace had been broken into earlier, so when he got the call, he had to hurry in to work and just totally forgot about him. The dog had been out there since 9:30 and I don't think the kennel was shaded at any point of the day. Poor thing! I wish I had noticed him earlier. There's a good chance he wouldn't have made it much longer out there with as hot as it was.

It just makes me feel bad that I don't know many of our neighbors. If I knew this guy better, I would've known something was wrong right away and wouldn't have felt the need to wait in fear of being a "meddler". I now know that he never leaves them outside when he's not home and I also have his card if I need anything. Really, how hard would it have been to get to know him sooner?

I guess I need to go door to door and introduce myself. I think I'll skip the people across the street. They're a multi-generational asian family that doesn't realize that it is proper etiquette in this country to at least smile when a neighbor passes by your home and waves and tells you hello. A stern look and a frown just isn't quite as neighborly in my opinion. They also don't know that when your neighbor watches you mess with your lawnmower for a good 20 minutes, unable to get it restarted and then walks over and helps you restart it, that the proper response is "thank you" or at least a smile and a nod to show that you just, in fact, witnessed the restarting of your lawnmower.