Filed under: Akbash, CCD, aggression, alaskan malamute, anxiety, canine, canine compulsive disorder, crazy bitch, dog behavior, dog story, dogs, election, free speech, harassment, mayor, recall, tibbetts, town board
This is Part 12 in the Crazy Bitch series about our Akbash/Lab mix Venus. She has Canine Compulsive Disorder (CCD) with aggression. Links to the previous episodes can be found at the end of this post.
Please note that the incidents described here are part of an ongoing investigation therefore some names have been changed and/or omitted.
First They Tried to Silence Venus, Then They Tried to Silence Me
We followed the 8:00 pm to 6:45 am curfew with Venus. We let Zeus do as he damn well pleased. The Bullys had said it wasn’t about him. We left the dogs out only when we were gone on Sundays because we knew would be gone too long for them to be indoors. Venus wore the bark collar. In the after burn of the mediation session the one thing we always came back to, the nightmare that haunted us was that Bully had admitted those were his boot tracks in the snow outside the fence. He had provoked Venus and Zeus. And so had the police.
We rationalized that since it didn’t happen every day it probably wouldn’t have any lasting negative impact on Venus and Zeus. But it would have to stop. Which, of course, was the problem. Would it stop? We believed the police harassment would stop. We could only hope the Bullys would stop.
Dogs don’t rationalize. They react to conditioning. Almost every time we drove off in the pickup and left them outside, someone – whether it was the police or the Bullys – harassed them and/or provoked them to bark. To complicate matters for our already anxious and obsessive Venus, she was wearing a shock collar and getting buzzed every time she barked. By any definition that is torture. Animal cruelty. She had become increasingly territorial.
After the first mediation session, Tod took the battery out of the bark collar and threw it away. We will always regret that we ever allowed her to be tortured that way.
The final mail-in ballot count for the Town Election happened on April 1. We lost. The recall lost. I lost my bid for a seat on the Board. While I consoled my comrades on the committee I was secretly relieved. At least it was over. Maybe the harassing emails would stop. Maybe the Bullys, the Board Members and their minions would stop harassing us.
We brought a professional Mediator with us to the second mediation session on April 3. I wish I could get that hour of my life back. What a waste of time!
Of course, Mr. and Mrs. Bully objected to the Mediator. But he, being a Mediator, convinced them he would be equally fair to them.
Chief asked if things had gotten any better.
Mr. B begrudgingly said they hadn’t had any problems with us since the last session.
Mrs. B added, “But eventually they’ll go back to letting Venus bark again. That’s the way it always works. It gets better for a little while then it just gets worse again.”
“Then what are we doing here?” Tod asked.
“We’re here because you’re a Board Member and you get special treatment,” Mr. B said.
“Yeah,” Mrs. B piped up. “I’d like to know why this meeting had to wait until after the election.”
I pushed my chair away from the table. “I thought we were here to talk about our dog barking.”
“That’s exactly why we’re here,” said Chief. “So let’s move on.”
The Mediator said, “The Tibbetts are here because they are eager to resolve this problem. From my understanding of the circumstances that brought us here, the Tibbetts have responded and are responding to your complaints about their dog barking. The fact that they’re here is all the evidence you need that they are not being shown any favoritism or special treatment.”
“If you’re just going to take their side, we’re leaving,” Mrs. B snapped.
The Mediator encouraged Mrs. B to speak her mind and assured her we’d all listen.
She lashed out at Tod. She said it was obvious he didn’t want to be there, that he was “seething.”
The Mediator asked Tod for his response.
He said, “After everything we’ve done to appease you, you still have the nerve to say we’ll just let Venus bark again like somehow we’re making her bark just to piss you off.”
“Well are you?” Mrs. B asked.
“Sure looks like that to us,” Mr. B sniped.
The Mediator held up his hands. “Well this isn’t going to resolve anything. Mrs. Tibbetts hasn’t had the chance to say anything. I think it’s her turn.”
I said, “I find it interesting that they say things have gotten better lately. Because nothing has changed. We’re not doing anything differently.”
“Did you get the citronella collar?” Chief asked.
“No,” I replied. “You said Mr. Bully’s logs showed that Venus was not barking excessively according to the ordinance. I did a little research and the citronella collars are less effective than the shock collar.”
“What about the dog trainer then?” Chief asked.
“No,” I replied. “You said yourself that you can’t train a dog not to bark. Venus is trained. I train my own dogs.
Mr. B sneered. “Well you failed miserably.”
I nodded. “Thank you.”
The Mediator told Mr. B he’d like to hear more from him.
Mr. B said, “I’d just like the Tibbetts to stop being so hostile toward us. They don’t speak to us. They don’t even wave anymore. With Tod being on the Board and all they set a bad example for our boys.”
The Mediator looked at us. “Well how about it? Do you think can ease the tension and restore a more friendly atmosphere?”
“No,” Tod and I said in unison.
The Mediator asked if we cared to elaborate on our feelings.
“No thanks,” Tod said.
So I said, “Let me get this straight. We’re being forced to live by your schedule, even though we have not violated the barking dog ordinance. You are the ones who have been hostile to us. You have harassed us and our dogs, which really is a violation of the law. But we have made all the concessions. Now we have this hammer hanging over our heads so that if we screw up. Bang!” I slammed my hand down on the table. “And you want us to be nice to you? I don’t think so.”
As we wrapped up the session, Chief told us, “From now on when you’re going to be out of town you will need to kennel your dogs instead of leaving them in your daughter’s care. She clearly can’t handle them.”
“You mean we aren’t allowed to have our dogs protecting our property while we’re gone? Like any other citizen?” Tod asked.
“If you contact the police department before you leave town, we’ll make sure your house is on the patrol roster.” Chief looked at Mr. B. “We do that for all citizens.”
We should have pressed charges.
Afterward, the Mediator told us, “In my opinion this is not about the dog. Those people absolutely hate you. My wife and I had neighbors like them once upon a time. We eventually had to move. I don’t see how you can ever resolve this. And I’m the professional. You’re right about having made all the concessions. They will hold this over your heads. There’s no doubt about that. This whole matter has not been handled properly by law enforcement from the beginning. If there’s no evidence that your dog’s barking has violated the law, then how did it ever come to this? That should have been established a year ago. You have been and are being held to a much higher standard and clearly that has to do with your position on the Board, Tod. And probably the whole recall matter. We all have to hope, as I’m sure you do, now that the recall is over with, this will all just fade away.”
Friedrich Nietzsche said, “Hope is the worst of evils, for it prolongs the torments of man.” To which I would add “and dog”.
The harassing emails did not stop. I was told we are being watched. I even got a nasty email from Mr. Bully. In May the other Board Members and Town Attorney made a big stink about my blog. They said my opinions were interpreted as Tod’s opinions and affected his ability to make objective decisions about issues before the Board and showed he had a vendetta against the Mayor. We hired an attorney who wrote a letter to the Board Members and Town Attorney on our behalf. The matter died at the July 14 Board Meeting.
Throughout April and May we kept up the same routine with the dogs, abiding by Venus’s curfew. Ski season had ended so we only left them on Sunday mornings for 4 or 5 hours. Venus wore the bark collar sans battery. We left them indoors when we were gone in the evening. We took them camping in Moab. On weekdays the Bullys were gone to work and school, so the dogs were outside all day.
We hadn’t heard a thing from the police department so we believed there had been no complaints. It was our understanding that the Chief would call us if there were.
We talked about putting our house up for sale and moving.
But that posed too much financial risk for us.
One Saturday afternoon in early June, in the midst of our legal battle with the Town, we went for a bike ride. We had left the dogs outside. We never made Venus wear the bark collar when we left to go biking since we knew it was only for a short time. Tod took a longer route, so I headed home first. I had only been gone an hour.
When I was two blocks from our house I saw a man walk out from the back side of our fence along the irrigation ditch. He walked along the end of the fence toward the front of the fence on the street side. At first I thought Tod was home. I quickly realized it wasn’t Tod. It was Mr. Bully.
I peddled madly like the wicked witch of the West. He turned and saw me. As our bad luck would have it, our neighborhood mailboxes are at the end of our property, about 50 feet from the end of our fence. Immediately Bully trotted toward the mailboxes and crossed the street. He wasn’t holding any mail in his hands.
Venus wasn’t barking. I knew if I confronted him he would say he was checking his mail. When Tod got home we talked about calling the police and filing a complaint. But we knew Bully would just claim he was checking his mail. It would be my word against his. With the mailboxes situated at the end of our property, even if it went to court the Judge would give Bully the benefit of the doubt.
Tod did talk to 2 attorneys about the ongoing harassment. They both said we would have to sue the Bullys and/or the Town. Lawyers have a way of cutting to the chase. They said suing for harassment would an expensive uphill battle that probably wouldn’t resolve anything. We kind of thought so.
Besides, we were already up to our eyeballs in alligators with the whole legal hassle about my blog, we had to let it go. We believed what mattered most was that Venus wasn’t barking and we had proved she wasn’t barking.
Stupid. Stupid. Stupid.
Stay tuned for Part 13
Filed under: Akbash, CCD, aggression, alaskan malamute, anxiety, canine, canine compulsive disorder, cesar millan, crazy bitch, dog behavior, dog fight, dog story, dog whisperer, dogland, dogs, hypersensitivity, lab, obsession, ordinance, rehabilitation, state statutes, tibbetts, town ordinances
This is Part 11 in the Crazy Bitch series about our Akbash/Lab mix Venus. She has Canine Compulsive Disorder (CCD) with aggression. Links to the previous episodes can be found at the end of this post.
Please note that the incidents described here are part of an ongoing investigation therefore some names have been changed and/or omitted.
Dog Fight
By the end of February last year the signs of stress were obvious. Zeus had a ratty coat. He was lethargic and grumpy. We didn’t know he had hypothyroidism. We now believe his hypothyroidism was caused by stress. Venus was also shedding like crazy. She was anxious and territorial. We took them cross country skiing with us at least once a week and walked them more, hoping that would help ease their stress.
Tod and I are pretty good at stress management. We don’t take things too seriously. Maybe not seriously enough sometimes. But we have the advantage of rational thought. Dogs don’t. Dogs react to energy. As much as we had shielded them from the Bullys’ hostility, it was always there. We thought if we didn’t get stressed out, they wouldn’t get stressed out. But we weren’t the problem.
Even though we couldn’t prove it, we were certain the Bullys were provoking the dogs to bark when we weren’t home. We knew police officers had provoked them at least 4 times. Since it only happened occasionally we thought the dogs would just forget about it. Now that we have a better understanding of dog psychology from watching the Dog Whisperer we know it affected them more than we realized.
Before the March 11 mediation session we paid visits to three of our closest neighbors, the Magpies, the Doves, and Mr. Finch. We explained our situation with the Bullys and talked to them about our dogs. There were sympathetic and supportive.
“Venus is a good watch dog,” the Doves said. “She barks for a reason, then she quiets down.”
“She barks,” Mr. Finch said. “But I think my dog barks more than she does.”
“She’s a good dog,” the Magpies said. “We don’t really hear her barking that much.”
Everyone had noticed the dogs weren’t out as much and wondered if that was really good for them. They signed brief depositions and said the police could contact them.
The mediation session with the Chief and the Bullys was a total disaster.
Mr. and Mrs. Bully made it clear they did not want to be there. “Why do you hate us?” they asked.
“We don’t hate you,” Tod said. “Why are you harassing us?”
“Your dog barking constantly is harassing us,” Mrs. B said. Then she gave a big long speech about how Venus’s barking had ruined their lives.
“Is this about just the one dog?” Chief asked. “Or both dogs?”
“Just Venus,” Mr. B said. “We don’t have a problem with Zeus.”
I held up the complaint form from November. “This says both dogs.”
“I said Venus,” Mr. B snapped. “If you’re just going to sit here and argue with us, we’re leaving.”
“Okay so we’ve established that Venus is the problem. Let’s move on,” Chief said.
“I’ve logged all the incidents right here.” Mr. B handed a spiral notebook to Chief.
He looked through it. “None of these constitutes excessive barking.” He placed a copy of the barking dog ordinance on the table.
Mr. B pushed it away. “So you’re holding them to the letter of the law and not the spirit of the law.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” I asked.
Mrs. B accused me of being snide and sarcastic and threatened to leave.
Mr. B said that because Tod is a Board Member he should be held to a higher standard.
Tod jumped in. “I have been held to a higher standard. You said nothing has been done about Venus’s barking. But that’s not true.” He described all the efforts we had made to appease them.
“We keep them inside so much they don’t even have winter coats,” I added.
“That’s your problem,” said Mr. B.
I displayed the depositions from three neighbors. “I have brief statements from three close neighbors. They all said Venus does not bark excessively and they don’t have any problems with our dogs.” I said to Chief, “They also said you could contact them to discuss our dogs.”
Bully checked to see who the neighbors were then shoved the papers back at me. “These don’t mean anything because we do have a problem.”
“The problem is, no matter what we’ve done it’s never enough,” Tod said. “So that now you’re harassing us with hang-up calls.”
“I had every right to make those calls,” Mr. B said. “You were letting her bark on purpose.”
“That’s not true,” I said.
“According to state statute, placing hang-up calls does constitute harassment.” Chief placed a copy of the statute in front of Mr. B.
18-9-111. Harassment – stalking.
(1) A person commits harassment if, with intent to harass, annoy, or alarm another person, he or she:
(f) Makes a telephone call or causes a telephone to ring repeatedly, whether or not a conversation ensues, with no purpose of legitimate conversation;
He pushed it away. “They weren’t hang-up calls. They just didn’t answer the phone. I could see through the window. They weren’t anywhere near the phone.”
My eyes almost popped out of my head. “How could you see inside a second story window from across the street?” I asked.
Mr. B glared at me.
“Let’s get back to why we’re here tonight,” Chief said. “We need to find a way to resolve this.”
“Let me explain something,” I said. “I’m hearing impaired. I don’t let Venus bark. Sometimes I can’t hear her barking.”
“What do you mean you’re hearing impaired?” Mr. B demanded.
“I’m deaf in my left ear. If the TV is on or I’m in the shower I can’t hear,” I said.
“Huh!” Mr. B snorted. “A likely excuse. Why are we just finding out about this now?”
“The point is, Mrs. Tibbetts can’t always hear the dog barking,” Chief said.
“Other dogs in the neighborhood bark,” Tod said. “Not just Venus. In fact I’ve reacted to another dog barking, thinking it was Venus, only to find her in the house.”
Mr. B glared at him. “We’re not talking about other dogs. We’re talking about your dog.”
“We’ve already established that,” said Chief.
Tod brought up the boot tracks in the snow outside the fence on the Sunday Bully complained to Officer Whittle.
“Her barking was driving us crazy so I went over to see if I could get her to shut up,” Mr. B said to Chief.
“That’s not the best way to deal with a barking dog. It only makes the situation worse,” Chief said. “Besides, you need to keep off the Tibbetts’ property when they’re not home.”
“The police have also provoked our dogs to bark,” Tod said.
“I’m aware of those incidents and I’ll put a stop to that,” Chief said. “We have other ways of determining whether your dogs are barking. Let’s get back to finding a way to resolve this. I’m open for suggestions.”
“It’s very simple,” Mr. B said. “We don’t want Venus to bark at all.”
“Well that’s not possible,” Chief said. “She’s a dog and dogs bark.”
Mrs. B pulled out a sheet of paper. “In that case we’ve made a schedule. Their dogs can’t be outside from 8:00 pm to 6:45 am.”
I laughed. “You can’t be serious. And what part of your lives do we get to control?”
Mrs. B nearly jumped across the table at me. “You already control our lives by letting your dog bark constantly.”
A shouting match erupted.
“Everybody calm down,” Chief said. “You can’t expect the Tibbetts to keep the dogs inside for that long. They have to relieve themselves.”
“Then they will have to have to be outside with them and keep them quiet,” Mrs. B said.
Chief looked at Tod and me. “Are you willing to do that?”
“Do we have any choice?” Tod asked.
Mrs. B sniped at him.
From then on it was a train wreck.
“Okay in return for us following your schedule we can leave the dogs out when we’re gone one night a week and on Sundays,” Tod said. “And we’ll put the bark collar on Venus.”
“As long as you’re home by 8:00 and the dogs don’t bark,” Mrs. B said.
“Unbelievable,” I muttered.
Mr. B glared at me. “And you have to get a citronella bark collar because the shock collar doesn’t work.
The session lasted an hour. It seemed like forever. I covered just about everything Tod and I were allowed to say. Bullys did most of the talking and interrupted us when we spoke. The recurring theme was that they were very unhappy and it was all Venus’s, and thus our fault. They clamped down on their accusation that we were letting Venus bark, even encouraging her to bark as a means of harassing them, and they chewed it to death.
Finally they insisted we hire a dog trainer to train Venus not to bark.
“I’ve trained quite a few dogs myself,” Chief said. “You can’t train a dog not to bark.”
“You can train a dog to do anything,” Mr. B said.
Because we apparently hadn’t endured enough abuse, Chief said we had to meet again in 3 weeks to check on our progress. He said to Bullys, “If you have any complaints, do not call the Tibbetts. You have my cell number so call me instead.”
On the way home Tod said, “That was some mediation session. They attacked us and imposed a curfew on our dogs. And Bully’s own logs proved Venus was never barking excessively. Pretty outrageous.”
I ungritted my teeth. “Well let’s look at the positive side. They were so breathtakingly unreasonable and they had no evidence of Venus barking excessively the Chief must have seen through it.”
“He did acknowledge that the police have provoked the dogs and said he’d deal with it,” Tod said.
“I think we cleared the air about one thing,” I added. “This isn’t about Venus barking, this is all about us.”
“Right. And we got slapped with a curfew,” Tod said.
Staying positive wasn’t all that easy so we made fun of them the rest of the evening until we laughed ourselves and the dogs silly.
The next day I ordered privacy shades to replace the blinds on our windows. Mr. B had admitted to looking in our windows. He must’ve used binoculars. We were totally creeped out.
We should have pressed charges.
Stay tuned for Part 12
