Is my Neighbor Living with a Dead Dog?

Is my Neighbor living with a Dead Dog?

I’ve never liked my neighbor, but I have pretended to.  We all do that, don’t we?  You pass each other in the driveways, taking out the weekly garbage, all that.  Who wants animosity?  Certainly not me.  But sometimes animosity comes looking for you. 

She’s a type, former hippie, the real dumb kind who doesn’t believe in medicine unless it was taught to her by a salesperson in the vitamin aisle at Whole Foods.  Why spend time listening to people with actual degrees and at least nominal brain cell activity when you can rub some slop on that oozed out of a tree or was shat out of Albanian maggot’s ass? Don’t get me wrong, I’m all for alternative medicine as long as no one is actually sick or injured.  It gives hypochondriacs and crackpots something to do and Lord knows those people need to be kept busy.  It’s all tailor made for my neighbor, whom I’ll call Rosemund for the simple reason that Rosemund is what she should have been named in the first place.   Rosemund is never sick.  She could never get sick because she never interacts with any other human beings and rarely leaves her shaded and shuttered apartment.  She used to, to visit her mother in the nursing home, only she got thrown out for screaming at the help for putting Desitin on her mother’s chapped ass instead of yogurt, the way she wanted.

When I first moved into this duplex, I would make friendly overtures, inviting Rosemund over for a glass of wine or a meal, but she was always on a “cleanse.”  I don’t understand these people and their cleanses or why they think they need them, nor do I accept their reasoning.  If the human intestine is such a vile thing that it needs to be cleansed they should just go get some of that stuff they give you before a colonoscopy; that stuff will clean out your gut for sure and within about 8 hours it will be so clean you can eat off it.  I know.  I’ve seen pictures.

            The other thing weird thing about my neighbor is that nobody, and I mean nobody, ever goes into her house.  The couple of times I’ve knocked on the door for one reason or another, she’s opened it just enough to squeeze out, closing it right behind her at the same rate she’s moving forward so you cannot catch a glimpse anything inside.  I’ve heard from the handyman that she’s got junk stacked from floor to ceiling in every room, with just a few paths to walk from one place to another.  He gets mad because every time he goes there to fix something, he has to move loads of crap to get to it.  The other day she wanted him to do something in the “spare” bedroom—these are 2 bedroom places—and she expected him to move all the shit out then put it back in.  He said, no thank you.  He’s very polite.

            But hey, people can do their things.  I’m a live and let live kind of gal.  If they want to be weirdass hoarders with stuff stacked to the ceiling that’s their business.  Think of the Collyer brothers, the greatest hoarders of all time.  In that haunted house mansion of theirs in New York City they didn’t bother anyone until eventually their tunnels amidst the rubbish collapsed and they suffocated under all the worthless shit they’d been collecting for 50 years and it started making a stink, or at least a stink that was worse than before.  It bothered the neighbors.

             But at this point, there’s not much of stink coming from Rosemund’s house, except for a cloying, old lady perfumy one when she’s been out on the porch watering her potted plants.  I have a feeling though, that pretty soon that is going to change.  In the four years I’ve lived here she has been threatening to get a dog, but I’ve never believed her.  How can she have a dog?  I’ve never seen her walk any place but from her house to the car, sometimes limping, sometimes with a cane although sometimes not, depending on whether anyone is watching.  As far as I can tell she’s one of those totally non-physical people who just sits home and watches TV all day, and dogs need to be exercised.  But about a month ago, the neighbor across the street, feeling sorry for her I guess because her mother without yogurt on her ass, died, took her to the pound and she got one.  I have not seen it or heard it.  The only reason I know it’s there is that the handyman told me and at my request took pictures with his phone. In the first picture you can see Rosemund’s legs, a shepherd mix dog on a leash, and a dog crate.  In the second picture, there’s a dog with a horribly swollen nose.

            I saw Rosemund out front, “Wow, what happened to your dog’s nose.”

            She was futzing around with her plants, watering them and pulling off dead leaves, got a real surprised look on her face that I knew about the dog, until she figured out that the handyman had been spying for me.  “Oh, she got in an ant hill,” she said.

            “Jeeze, are you going to take her to the vet?” 

            “Oh no, oh no.  Coconut oil,” she says.

            “What about coconut oil?”  I’ve got nothing against coconut oil.  I have some in my bathroom.  It’s lovely after you’ve shaved your legs.

            “I use coconut oil,” she said.

            “For what?”  I was really confused.  I’ve known some really brain dead hippies in my time, mostly during the seventies and I don’t think even the dumbest of them would have put coconut oil on a dog’s nose that was swollen to 3 times it’s normal size. 

            “I have some Benedryl,” says I.  “At least it will bring down the swelling.”  But she starts lecturing me on the dangers of “allopathic” medicine.

 “Ohh, I don’t want to make it worse!” she says.  “She’s also got a really bad case of dog flu.”  Again, I search my mind for what the heck she could be talking about.  I’ve adopted lots of animals from shelters and pounds and never heard of the of “dog flu.”

 Finally, I twigged. “You mean kennel cough?  They all get it.  That’s why they give you a free vet check.  If you take her in they’ll give her some antibiotics and it will be over in two or three days.”

She looks at me with massive superiority, almost as if I’m a particularly thick child, and explains that she took her to a vet who gave her “random” antibiotics and it made her worse.  What she is fighting now is a weak immune system, with herbs and lots of nutrients.  Thank you for your concern, (but fuck you.)

Okay, I added the last part. But it was there.  She’s one of those women who cultivates a “sweet” personality.  These people are usually as dangerous as fuck.  

A week or so later, I see her out front engaged in heated conversation with the neighbor who took her to the pound to get the dog in the first place.  She’s pleading and finally yelling at Rosemund to take the dog to the vet.  Seems the coconut oil she rubbed all over the ant-bitten swollen muzzle has cause a raging infection.  This I hear later from the neighbor who tells me that she not only offered to take the dog to the vet, but to pay for it.  Rosemund said no and the neighbor now says she’s “washed her hands of her.”

Well, that’s fine for her.  She’s across the street but I share a backyard fence and a wall with this psychotic throwback, and have not heard or seen any sign of a dog over there, at all.  I’ve called Animal Control and they say there’s nothing they can do unless I’ve seen the dog, which I haven’t.  I look through the fence.  I don’t think it’s even been in the back yard.  I’m surrounded by back yard fences on three sides.  On one side lives Zack, a friendly Shar Pei mix with whom my dogs visit regularly, and in the back there are a couple of I don’t know whats, but both my dogs run over to that fence when they go out and pee or bark at it, depending on what the moment requires.  They never go over to Rosemund’s fence.

So yeah, I’m pretty sure Rosemund has increased her hoarding to include a dead dog.  I imagine she talks to it every day, maybe even pets it; dead dogs stay soft for awhile.  I’ve tried intervention, but Animal Control says there’s nothing they can do unless I’ve seen it, and of course I haven’t.

I imagine one of these days I’ll start to smell it.

So, I really have no idea what is going on next door.  I only know that the only way a young dog would stay this quiet is if it was still deathly ill, or dead.  On some days I try to be optimistic; maybe she took it back to the pound, but realistically, there’s no way in hell.  That would mean Rosemund was wrong and if I’ve learned one thing over the last few years, it’s that Rosemund is never wrong.