-James Thurber
Across the alley from me is an old church who's main floor has been turned into an art studio by a man in town. In the basement he is operating an art framing business. In back of the church is a house that used to be the home of the church pastor and is now used for storage by the man who has the art studio and owns the property.
About two weeks ago I was walking by the property when I heard the sound of puppies barking. I was surprised to see that a fence had been built between the church and the house. I walked up to it and discovered not only was there a fence but that the fence formed one wall of a large dog pen. In the pen were seven Labrador Retriever puppies. All were jumping up and down, all were wagging their tails, and all were barking. Also inside the pen were two large empty metal feeding bowls, one very large watering trough, two old chewed-up sneakers, and about one hundred plastic ties. The ties had been in bunches of twenty but the puppies had broken some of them open and scattered them on the ground. I was worried about the puppies eating the ties so I went into the pen to pick them up.
The second I stepped inside I was jumped on by seven frantic puppies wanting attention. I petted any and all I could reach and then pushed them away while I tried to pick up the ties. It took about twenty minutes and for the first fifteen minutes the puppies jumped on me and barked for attention. After I was finished I squatted down and petted puppies. That set off another round of jumping and barking but after a few minutes they settled down again and stopped going crazy whenever I touched them. One just want some human contact and sat down between my legs and leaned against me. When I left it set off another round of jumping and barking.
Later that day I saw the owner's car parked next to the church and went over to talk to him. He told me he was raising the puppies to sell as dock dogs. Dock dogs are dogs that compete by jumping off a dock into water. The dog that makes the longest jump wins.
Now let me tell you all the things wrong with this idea of his. First, he is the most disorganized man I have every met. He is the one who left the ties in the pen. Second, he doesn't know what he is doing. This you can tell by the third and fourth things; the puppies were already ten and one-half weeks old and he was trying to sell them on the Internet. Responsible breeders already have buyers lined up before they produce puppies.
It is now two week later and the poor puppies are still there. I'm not sure what to do. They are past the age of real puppies and are now almost twice as large as they were when I first saw them. We have a law in this town that each household can only have three dogs. I am tired of the barking and I am tired of the smell of dog poop drifting over into my yard. Like I said before he is not that responsible and so is not good about cleaning the pen. I could turn him in but then what would happen to the puppies? My husband said we should turn him in since that might keep him from doing this again but I'm not so sure.
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