Team Small Dog hangs out with their friendly neighbors.

Preface: Laura doesn't condone having dogs that run out and bark at dogs that go by their front yard fence. She slaps her Bad Dog Trainer self on the hand right now. Twice. Three times.

Then goes on to tell you this tale.

Do you know the crazy lady that lives by me? She lives in the light green house around the corner. She has a normal looking car and was one of the first people in the neighborhood to start the new trend of Growing Recession Vegetables in Your Whole Front Yard in Giant Planter Boxes. She looks like your basic, frumpy, dumpy lady. Doesn't have overly unusual garments, foil in her windows or a yard full of rocks in little cups. No toasters in her trees. No outward signs of crazy. Just an ugly haircut. But I should know better. You can't always see the crazy. But it might be there and then you better watch out.

She has a yellowish dog and a black and white spotty dog. They're both sort of overweight, hairy australian shepherd-lab-shepherd mix-cattle dog-husky blendy type dogs. That type you see every day. She's the type of dog owner that has pretty darn aggressive and scarey dogs but thinks they're just playing! Almost just ate someone but It's Just Playing! When I see her walking them around, I avoid them like the plague. No, worse than the plague. Because the plague you don't see coming. This, you see 2 chubby, hairy dogs tied together on the longest flexi leash in the world coming closer by the second. And one dog is all frothy teeth lunging coming straight at you, towing it's blonde sidekick and the whole thing being steered by a grinning vegetable grower.

Like I have had to run away before. Just tell dogs GO and run. The few occasions I used to see her down at the beach, we just left. Fast.

Flashback Alert!

Once she had them tied to her front fence, with them hooked together and hooked to a flexi leash hooked to the fence on the sidewalk. Kind of screaming, BIG RED FLAG OF DANGER and crossed the street to be as far away as I could and maybe sneak by unnoticed. Either this or take the long way home. Those two, nothing goes by them, real rocket scientist sleuths, they are. Three juicy little black hors'd'eourves certainly won't go unnoticed, and yep, they lunge into the street, as far as their flexi will let them go. Lunging, snarling, barking, almost to the sidewalk on the other side of the street. We are hustling by and they have that flexi cable stretched dangerously taut out in the middle of the street. Like, where the cars like to drive. When we cross the street, taking a detoury way back to our house to avoid being eaten, they run back in hopes of getting us and hogtied their tied together selves around a parked car and are double lunging now from that. What a mess.

From across the street, I yell, "HEY! Your dogs are freaking out and in the street! HEY! They're going after my dogs! And they're tied up in THE STREET!"

Dumpy lady doesn't appear so off I go and hope no lowrider guys or Prius ladies or Volvo moms go flying around that corner and take their bad dog asses out. Even bad dogs don't deserve that. And actually, the lowrider guys usually drive the slowest. Those guys, they're in no big hurry. Those ladies in the Priuses, watch out.

Flashback over.

So this morning, my front door is open and all of a sudden there's a mad barking rush out there, I follow out fast. The Bad Dog Lady has her dogs parked, in front of my house, noses and fangs through the fence, laughing. A maniacal laugh, I guess, in as much as a dumpy, glasses wearing, overweight in a stretched out t-shirt advertising something green and organic, can be. Dog words are being exchanged. Potty mouthed, them-is-fightin-words dog words are coming from all sides. Squirrel! Cat Poop! Mailman! UPS GUY! Otterpop involves herself in this, which is now the battle of Team Small Dog on one side and Fat Evil Dogs on the other and a lot of barking but with lungy snarling coming from her side. Extra points for Fat Evil Dogs! So NOT a good thing, and I go down to the fence to just pluck Otterpop out of the mix before I call everybody in.

Seether's about to blow her gasket and I grab her up, and glare-hiss, "What are you DOING??" Directed at the lady. Not Otterpop. I KNOW what Otterpop is doing.

The lady is laughing. Like this is the funniest thing in the world. I'm always trying to think of funny things, and this is not on my list. The time Lloyd invited all the naked gays to Ari's house for a pool party on Entourage is on my list. The time me and Joel Warner painted our house is on my list. Hand stirring up all the fixings of a dog fight not even on Kathy Griffin's D list. Maybe just a few line items above defending a creepy child molester in court on the list that has Rwandan genocide at the bottom.

"Your dogs have gone after my dogs before and this is not a GOOD IDEA!" I go, sort of weirdly calm actually because, I'm kind of confused that is she really so crazy that she's doing this? Like front yard vegetable boxes, while noble and cost effective, might be sort of ugly as front yard decor, but not really indicators of the completely bad judgement of the mentally ill.

She looks up at me, in my pony jammies, standing there on my gopher decimated front patch of dirt, and goes, "Your dogs shouldn't do it either." But she's not budging. Because this is Fun!

"They're in THEIR YARD! Can you just KEEP WALKING?"

So I have snarling Seether now, tucked under my arm, call Ruby in and Gustavo who generally is so HAPPY to see new friends out front, has begun the monkey screaming and I'm juggling dogs and pulling them in with me. Being a crazy lady, she's still not moving along. Her dogs, totally unglued.

"Are you CRAZY?" is what comes out of my mouth. Later on I think of many, far better things I could have said. Because actually I know from experience, asking Crazy People if they are Crazy doesn't always yield productive results.

She doesn't answer, and not until all my dogs get herded back into the house, does she pull her dogs back on their flexi leash and continue her stroll down the block, grinning.