Irish Temper and All That
Posted on November 6, 2007 - Filed Under Personal, Simple Life | 5 Comments
WARNING: RANT FORTHCOMING!
Ok, I´m not actually Irish, I´m mostly Welsh, but I do have a horrible temper. Since the boys, I´ve been doing pretty well at holding it in, but this morning, I broke out the big guns.
See, we woke up to dirty diapers and garbage spread all over our front yard. Our yard isn´t much, but Dorian plays there and having to clean the mess up just put me over the top. Why? Because the two neighbor dogs come in every single night and sometimes during the day, to do their business in OUR yard and to get into everything they can. I´ve found dishes dragged halfway to their house!
This has been an issue for a LOOOOONG time and today I snapped. Irving was telling me to just chill out, but I´m sick of chilling out. They need to take responsability for their animals. So, I tossed a few diapers over the not-working fence. Which pissed them off. But I think it´s only fair, we have diapers and dog poop, they can surely deal with a little baby poop, right? Ok, maybe it was a bit overboard, but this has been going on for too long.
So, they came out and the woman starts to get after me, saying we need to treat them with respect. I told her that respect would start when she kept her dogs from ahem, “pooping” where my children play. And she told me that “they´re dogs, what can we do? They go where they want to go.” Uh, right.
I suggested that her dogs might, um, meet an untimely demise if they don´t start controlling them and she said, “Fine, do what you want.” That´s the way to take responsibility, lady. She also suggested we might want to build a wall. Which wouldn´t help because they get in near Irving´s parents more often than not, since we´ve blocked up the holes here. I can´t believe people would let their animals run wild like that! And take 0 responsability!
The absolute worst was the woman´s (who, I might mention, is Irving´s aunt) parting words, “What do you have to do with this, it isn´t even your country!”
I hate racism. I find it a lot here. But that is just pathetic. I just said, “I would have the same issue if this happened in Canada.” This woman claims she is a Christian, but she is here, telling me basically that I have no right to say or do anything because I´m not in my own country!?! This is her parting argument for everything. When we had a spat over us building our wall, she said, “You can´t just come into someone´s country and disrespect them.” And her sister claimed that I was being the racist . . . because I was building a house! I had told them we were going to take down part of their fence (which was on our side anyway) to build the first wall, but apparently they didn´t hear it and claimed that it was my rich country upbringing that allowed me to just rip down fences and build a house.
The truth is, I don´t want to kill their dogs. I hate them, but I also hate the idea of killing an animal because the owner is irresponsible. This is a third world country, so animal services are minimal. But there is an shelter . . . we are thinking of trying to catch them and take them there. At least someone else will give them a better home.
Ok, rant over. Now I´m just depressed. I wish I had enough money to just build the wall all around our house right now. Or at least Q5,000 (about $750), to claim the piece of land that they are illegally using (it actually belongs to Irving´s family, but no one has enough money to sort out the paperwork, if I do it, Irving and I can add the land to our piece of property). That would be very nice. But I can´t, and so I will just have to go and get some constructive work done.
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5 Responses to “Irish Temper and All That”
Talk to Me, People!
Sorry about all of what happened. That is so frustrating in any country, why do they have to bring your race into it? That is what happened with a friend of my husbands everything I would do anything he didn’t like. It was always “stupid gringa”. I hate that! It sounds like it would be very nice to get these relatives a little farther away from everyone!
I get what you mean. Dogs in those kind of countries (mine included) are usually not as well-trained.
I’m sure you see this: Dogs are not allowed inside the house because they’re dirty. They are allowed to play in dirt. They are not given proper dog food (just leftovers or butcher’s stuffs), the concept of “walking the dog” is strange, dog are free to poop anywhere outside the house yada yada yada. If dogs have fleas and ticks, hey, it’s normal. You live there, you know what I mean.
I hope you solve this problem soon!
It happened all the time when I was in my parents house in the Philippines, the dogs dragged dirty diapers from the garbage nearby and scattered it in our front lawn! I was enraged and my parents told me to chill. Of course I didn’t chill!
When I went to my neighbors and complained they told me I was being so short-fused and lacked understanding since I went to Japan! That I’ve changed. DUH!!
I hope you sort the dog problem soon. Mine was temporary as I don’t live where the dirty dogs are. I feel for my parents though.
Wow, thanks for the support. All the expats are coming out of the woodwork.
It really is silly for people to expect anything from animals that are treated like strays, even by their owners!
Gen, I know how you feel about this…
We had this very same issues, except our problem was that this guy, with his heart in the right place, would adopt dogs, he had 6 of them. But, when he walked them, he would not have them on a leash and two in particular would simply roam and then chase our cat.
It is also a law here, that you MUST pick up your dogs … wel … business. If not, you can be fined up to $250, ouch!
Good luck…