Today I went kayaking with my marvellous mate, Walter. He also came over last night to console me after I'd had a barney with the next door neighbour. The neighbour's dog has been going off its nut at me every time I walk out the back door for months now. I finally snapped and asked him to do something about it. He yelled at me for quite some time until I decided to walk away, at which point he continued to yell, but I could no longer hear him. I'm just really surprised that he hasn't noticed his dog going nuts for months.
Walter should've been a diplomat. Today, when we came back from kayaking, we went to sit in the back yard. The dog, of course, went spacko. Walter went over and tried to talk to it. It continued to go spacko. The owner came out and Walter had a nice chat with him, dog continued to go spacko. I tried to talk to the owner, too, but am now persona non grata.
Anyway, the wash up is that the neighbours now seem to be doing something about the dog making a racket. It's probably the best I can hope for.
The funniest part of the whole exchange was when the dog owner berated me for being a 'Mainlander'. Yes, I come from the mainland. He'd probably be surprised if he knew I was from Darwin. Darwin is even more frontiersville than Tasmania.
Ah well. I'll give it another year and see what happens. It was a bit of a leap to come here and hasn't worked out quite as I expected, but I love the garden and the house and cats are very happy, as am I in general.