Rule Breakers

Alaska has been awesome.  It's beautiful.  There is so much to do. The people are so friendly - everyone wants to stop and give you their life story, because nobody is in a hurry. (Seriously, the Craigslist stranger we bought a bike off of, the Home Depot man, the neighbor, the other neighbor, the man in the parking lot, the lady at the mall...you know, everyone.)  Anyways, it's all been very welcoming.

Even our home has been great, which I talked about here.  The only downside is we went from this yard...

to this yard...

Yep, as you can see it's a tad bit smaller - and keep in mind that we have a large 70lb dog.  But since this house was the best we found, we thought we could work with this 8ft deep yard because there is a huge green common space directly behind us (that is well maintained without our help. yay!). 

We spent the first 5 days playing catch with her in the vast space, taking her to the old tennis courts (that we have yet to see anyone play on), and even playing with a cute 10 week old puppy a few doors down.  It's been a great way to meet the neighbors...until...

Not even a week after moving in we get this wonderful letter from the association.  Now, our neighborhood is considered a prestigious community (we learned this after moving in) that was built in the 70's - and most of the original owners still live here.  So, it tends to be an older community. Most are very friendly, which is awesome.  But apparently one, in particular, needs more to do. 

The letter informed us that our dog was barking until 1am (which, quite frankly, if you know us - we go to sleep around 10 with Mocha at the end of our bed...so I'm pretty sure we'd know if she was barking), a dog off the leash (ok - that was true, but we had seen lots of that, so we thought no big deal), and a dog on the people-only tennis court. 

Kinda disheartening. Kinda frustrating. Matt called that day and apparently this one neighbor (who we are still trying to figure out who it is, so we can introduce ourselves:) ) had been sitting around just looking for rule breakers - including the president of the association. haha.

Welcome to the neighborhood, right?

I understand the barking. Not much we can do about it (I've done the bark collar thing before, but would rather not again). We will just leaver her inside while we are gone, I guess.  I mean we'll have to do that for 9 months of the year anyways, so that was anticipated.

The tennis court can be avoided (though I thought it provided a great fenced in area for Mocha).

And well, the off the leash problem...well that kinda stinks because where is she going to run around and play fetch? It freaked me out thinking we'd have to take her for daily walks in the dead of winter after work.  Makes me cold thinking about it!

But due to my brilliant husband, the problem is solved...

A 50 foot rope.

Take that HOA.