Corralling Our Urban Sprawl

Sly and Tianna, our playful Boxer dogs, are safe in their new pen, purchased solely for containment while our new fence is put in place. After their ordeal a few months back when they escaped from our rickety fence and ended up in the "care of the Animal Control" officials, they wouldn’t be able to take the stress of being away from home in temporary boarding during this construction.

For months, we’d been promised a new fence by the company building a few hundred new homes, which now border my house on two sides. Today is the day. The fence is said to be their "Thanks for being such a good neighbor" for the past year and a half, while putting up with the continuous noise, dirt, dust, trash, dirty automobiles (after a visit to the car wash), traffic, and did I mention DIRT…that a major project like that creates.

If the truth be known, the fence they are trying to pass off as a token of their gratitude and total good will, is something they’d have to do on at least two sides anyway since the new homeowners would probably expect something a little more substantial then what sits there now. Considering the fact that my 15 year old fence has been gingerly held together with a lick and their promise after months of them running into it with dirt movers and the like, plus causing my dogs to end up captives of the dog catcher, I feel that providing me one length of the fence for free is the very least they can do.

Good fences….Good neighbors!