I would rather chew my own arm off- like a bear with his leg caught in a steel trap- then deal with confrontation. I have only lived in my new rental house for about 3 months, but I had already proven to be a terrible neighbor. Shortly after we moved in, we acquired a Boxer puppy, to go with our other 2 dogs, and then of course, I added Clepto dog as he was soon nicknamed.
Aside from the barking, the constant, uproarious noise Clepto made when a horse so much as snorted, he had formed a close bond to the boxer, and they made trails. They started in our yard, and split in three directions. One to the poop station- of course in the most inconvenient and disgusting area right near the house (what happened to NOT pooing where you live?) The other trail led into the woods for about 5 feet, and then split. One trail lead to one neighbor, one to the other.
The dogs treated neighbor 1 like a second family. Every day about 5 o'clock, Clepto and the boxer would burst off the front porch like someone had lit their tails on fire, bypass poo station and take trail number 1. Their second family was home! First you'd hear barking, ear shattering, glass shaking barking and then a squeal (I couldn't tell if it was from joy or horror- (Clepto had a habit of giving 'hugs' that involved him hurling his exuberant 70 pounds at you, and putting his tiger claws on your shoulder and jumping up and down like a pogo stick. Forget the knee in the stomach or the screamed NO!, DOWN, SIT or GOD GET THE $#@^ OFF, worked. He just pogo-ed faster) So maybe he was hugging someone, or perhaps the neighbors were the only people in the world to actually be happy to see him.
15 minutes later, both dogs would return, exhausted and satisfied. They'd sleep on the porch and stay there until they were invited in, or Clepto decided it was time to come in, and would put his muddy paw prints on the front door and over the peep-hole while digging loudly at the metal. If you chose to ignore this (and break out the 409 later to clean said prints off) he would go to the window and dig at the vinyl until you were sure he'd rip the frame off and you'd lose the $1000 deposit on the house because you came with 3 horses and 3 dogs. . . .
Since the dogs were constantly in sight or earshot, so somehow I never actually saw the thefts happen. One minute you'd have 2 sleeping dogs. You go outside again, and you STILL had 2 sleeping dogs, except one was sleeping on something. Something that resembled Pier One tweed furniture cushion that did not belong to this house.
"Where did this come from?" I asked the dogs. Clepto was laying on a new, longer version of the previously stolen Pier One cushion, long enough for two dogs, but instead of sharing- he stretched out fully, and chewed off one of the string ties.
In dog language when your person asks "Where did this come from?" They really hear "I REALLY LOVE WHAT YOU'VE DONE! GOOD DOGS!" The boxer jumped up, circled, shaking her stump of a tail, Clepto simply lashed out with his, spanking my kneecaps and then shoving his full weight against my legs in an attempt to make me fall so you could be closer to him, and therefore be licked.
This plan only worked a few times on me- sending me flailing and screaming over a railroad tie- right into poo station, and nearly face first with an industrial sized pile. It always worked on my 5 year old Beeps, who thought this was a fine game getting shoved down- she attempted to recreate it several times, by shoving her full weight into Clepto dog, knocking him to the ground and mauling him with her own exuberance and love of attention. Seeing Beeps now causes an instant reaction- he makes a peculiar OWWWOW sound, and falls on his side "HUMPH!" he says and then lets her stab him in the eyes with her fingers and pull his hair.
I have to admit, I kept the dog bed. I kept saying "I have to return that" but it was Eddie Bauer, it had a removeable cover. I should really wash the cover before I return it. . . but also, which neighbor did it come from? What happens if I took it to the wrong house. What if the person simply opened the door, his eye looking tiny and very far away, because I was looking at it from the wrong side of a scope? It was easier to just to make excuses about the bed than actually return it. . so I kept the dog bed- I sneaked the first cushion back,(that was 'real' stealing, plus it was easy to return, hurling it from the woods into the general vicinity of their house- so it gave the cushion that 'windblown' look. Like - 'look honey, the cushion isn't gone, the wind just blew it. . . '
But now, I had a six foot long tweed cushion with 4 inch muddy paw prints across it. There was no removable cover to hide the evidence, it was winter so there was no hosing with a frozen hose, there was no hurling 6 feet of foam to "look" like the wind "blew" it from the balcony. . . . so I had to take it back. Doing what any good mother would do of a child that got caught stealing, I brought Clepto with me to apologize, okay maybe not apologize, but perhaps trip the person if they had a gun.
Their house didn't look as regal from the front. From the back, my view, it's a tall two stories on top of a hill, it's run off water pouring into my pasture and turning it into a solid foot of mud that my dog can run through, and it's wrought iron lawn furniture.
From the front the yard had a poop filled circle, a perfect circle that only a dog tied on a chain can make. They had their own industrial piles, right up tho the front walk. I lumbered up their stairs, foam cushion over one shoulder, dog bed in the other. . . I knocked. Something inside thumped, and then the door shook. A deep throaty bark answered me. I knocked again, nothing. I sighed in relief and hung the sad, disrespected cushion, and the hopelessly muddy bed over their porch railing and ran. I felt bad when I got in the car, and decided to leave a note. I didn't have a pen, or paper (of course) but I did have a crayon and a wrinkled flyer that said "Bad hoof? Good Farrier" then a picture of a severely deformed hoof before and after pic. It was a gross looking flyer out of context and being left for a 'non-horse' person. I found a broken crayon on the bottom of the floor and wrote on the back of the note: "I believe my dog is stealing your things. Very sorry." My hand writing really gave it that "Your neighbor is a mad serial killer" feel. I stuck it in the edge of their dirty, scratched door.
I got back in the truck, slammed the door, and glad to be rid of the square, cloth covered hunks of guilt laying on my porch. "Ahh," I sighed, wiped my hands on my pants and slammed the door. As I began to drive away, I looked up and saw something familiar. Very familiar, and then I saw the cushion fall. Clepto was in the back of the truck- it wasn't him making the mess. Then I saw it- on the front porch was a wiggling black boxer butt that decided to stop wiggling and curl up on a nice tweed Pier One cushion. I yelled, "Git off that and c'mon!" but she looked at me, frightened, like a dog who was simply sleeping on their porch and being yelled at by a stranger. I tried the nice approach "C'mon!" I patted my leg trying to sound happy, not like an annoyed parent trying to retrieve her dog off someone else's porch, soiling their nice furniture. She shrunk away and whined. "Forget it!" I said, slamming the door and driving to work. "Just forget it."
At least Clepto was with me, so if something went missing I knew who to blame.
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