There is a house down the road that has about four or five small dogs of various breeds, I think it’s four, you know the ones: yappy and nippy, and when they run around they could easily be mistaken for leaves, blowing this way and that with no direction to speak of.
This house also has a large gate on the side of the house that is periodically left open (accidentally, I imagine) and at least once a month as I walk my 50lb rescue dog past their home, all of those little dogs come flying out like bats, a flurry of movement, scattering in all directions.
Inevitably one of them will run over and start nipping at my dog, whether it wants to play, or is just being aggressive I never know – you can never really tell with small dogs. So of course I do the right thing and go and knock on their door to let them know their mini wolf pack is loose.
They have a Ring doorbell but never open the door. I will hear the Ring doorbell click as if someone is about to speak, but they never do. You’d think they would answer when there is a lady with a dog standing on their front porch while in the background there is at least one of their dogs visible. I know somebody of driving age is home because there are always at least two cars in the driveway. I used to try the doorbell again, feeling bad that their dogs were running through the neighborhood unchecked….if they were my dogs I’d want to know, and I’d hope someone would knock on my door to tell me. After the second click, I would lean into the camera, (I’m sure that’s gorgeous) and say “Your gate is open and your dogs are out. Thought you’d want to know.”
Still nothing. I know they heard me though because when I walk back by on the way home the gate is shut. This has happened multiple times. Multiple.
Although now, I only press the doorbell once, and then tell them “Your dogs are out”, still nothing. Always closed the gate when I go by twenty or so minutes later.
It’s so weird to me. Never a thank you or even any type of acknowledgment. I keep thinking next time I should just keep going and not say anything. But I can’t. Anything could happen to such little dogs running free in the neighborhood. As much as I want to be spiteful I just can not.
An eye for an eye just leaves the whole world blind.
I know from walking by their house at least four times a day for the last three and a half years that they are a family of five. Mom, Dad, one daughter, and two sons. The youngest is a boy about my son’s age, the girl is in the middle and is pretty close to being a senior in high school and the eldest boy just went off to college last August. They have done a lot of work on their home in the last three years. Particularly their backyard. Landscaping, adding terraces and an in-ground pool, hot tub, and sheltered cabana/tiki bar, they turned it into a real oasis, and it looked amazing before they added the 8-foot privacy fence (the one with the gate on the side of the house.)
When we first moved to the neighborhood, their backyard was still a regular old backyard with a trampoline and a decrepit old playhouse. I imagined that my son might become friends with their kid and another boy that also lives down the road. However, we had only lived here for a few months before covid scared everyone inside for an extended amount of time. And as kids are turning into teens they are far less likely to roam around the neighborhood looking for a new friend to ride bikes or hang out with, unfortunately (or fortunately as the case may be) that’s right where my boy was during that time. All was not lost, however, he still had his friends in the place we moved from and they video-chatted and played games online almost daily while out of school for months. Technology for the win for an only child.
When we lived in that other town, there was a family who lived in the same neighborhood as us, and whose son was in the same class as my son. We were acquaintances, and I knew the husband left for work very early in the morning, they had a premature sick baby, and the mom often worked nights, so I offered to pick their son up on my way through the neighborhood in the morning for a couple of weeks. A couple of weeks turned into the entire school year, and in turn, they often took my son after school, til I got home from work. I was grateful and always made sure to thank her, often picking up a frappuccino or some other dessert in a cup from Starbucks on my way over. Never once was a Thank You ever said for the drinks or the rides, in fact, the general attitude from both of them was that they were doing us the favor by letting her son ride in my car to school every day. I never heard either of them ever say thank you to anybody, for that matter. This is difficult when you are trying to teach your own child the importance of saying please and thank you. It was about then we would talk about how every family has rules that work for them. I didn’t know why they never said thank you, they seemed pleasant enough in all other areas of life.
Huh.
Would anyone else have expected a thank you?
There have also been multiple times when I have been shopping, or at a playground when my son was younger, and we would see/find a lost child without an adult in sight. I am of the mindset that every kid is my kid, we need to keep a lookout for other people’s children. So we would go over and say hello and ask if they were lost or needed help. The woeful reply was usually yes, so we would introduce ourselves and say “Let’s find your mom/dad/person you are here with,” inevitably an adult would show up and grab their kid like I was trying to steal them. Then they rush away without so much as a nod of gratitude or even eye contact.
I understand teaching your kids about stranger danger, but are they not teaching them about good adults too? The ones your child can trust? I always told my son if he was ever lost at a playground or store to stay in one place or find a policeman or more realistically, another mother and tell her that he was lost. Thank goodness this never happened. I also had a recurring nightmare that if he did ever get lost and did this, they would ignore him because you know, people.
Has society in certain areas of the U.S. reached a point where people can’t thank someone else for looking out for their kids or dogs without thinking someone is trying to traffick them or something? Read.The.Room.People!
And begs the question – What has happened to people? Does nobody use their own intuition or intelligence when evaluating if someone has good intentions toward them? Did the effects of Covid and being isolated accelerate society’s fear of other people?
Keeping in mind, I am only speaking from my own experiences in the geographical areas I have lived in and witnessed this behavior with my own eyes. I’m sure there are as many observations of this as there are people.
I don’t have any answers or theories on this one. I’m curious though, has anyone else noticed similar behavior?
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