Feeling violated

GC has been violating the neighbours this week.

Four-Dog Neighbour

Two doors down from me is a woman with four dogs.

For three evenings last week, two dogs barked incessantly in her postage-stamp back yard. On the third evening I went over and talked to the dogs. They settled down, but started crying again when I left. I rang her doorbell but she didn’t answer, so I left a note (with my name and address) in her mailbox. It said “Your dogs have been crying the last few evenings. It’s annoying, but I also feel sorry for them since they seem so anxious.”

The next day we came home and heard a different dog barking at the same place. I peeked through the gate and saw an adorable puppy on a very short chain. He had little room to move, and he was unhappy. I opened the gate and went in and sat with him. He stopped crying right away and started licking my hand. GC brought him a margarine container full of water, and he had a drink. He was the sweetest puppy. GC wrote a note and left it on the neighbour’s windshield. It said “Your dogs have been barking a lot lately. Is there anything you can do about it?”

The next day GC ran into her. She said she puts the puppy out there to pee and he’s not allowed back in until he pees, but he won’t pee. She gives him a short chain so he won’t eat her flowers. She was concerned when she saw the margarine container of water because now neighbours were involved, and she has four dogs instead of the legal three. She hoped GC wasn’t going to call By-law on her. GC said no, he just wanted her dogs not to bark so much.

The next day the margarine container was at our back door. There were no dogs barking. We figured things were resolved…

Private Garbage Neighbour

Monday was garbage day. When GC got home from walking Rosie, he saw that the recycling truck had already done our side of the street but not the other side. He hadn’t gotten our recycling out in time, so he took it across the street and left it on a neighbour’s curb.

The neighbour then moved the bins and left a note:

“Dear sneaky person, Please do not bring your garbage to my property. I really don’t appreciate it. If you had asked me, maybe we could have worked something out. But this has left me feeling very violated, especially because you wait until I am gone. I expect this to stop.”

GC went and introduced himself and talked to her and they worked things out. (She’s from Toronto and I guess they have different rules there.)

On his way back from sorting that out, Four-Dog Neighbour confronted GC again. She said she’d been thinking about our notes and the margarine container, and she feels violated because we went into her back yard. That’s why she returned the margarine container – so we’d know how it felt to have someone come into our back yard. She wanted us to feel as violated as she had felt. (Which we didn’t.)

Anyway, what’s with everybody feeling violated over minor things like giving their dog water or putting our garbage on their curb? For that matter, what do people even mean when they say they feel violated?