Oh how quickly our luck changes...

Just when we thought everything was going our way, we had one of the worst weeks ever!

On Tuesday, May 8th - That evening, we had finished dinner and Joel was back downstairs in the basement. I was on the first floor with Baker when he showed the signal that he needed to go to the bathroom. So I got up and we had walked out onto our porch together.

As soon as Baker stepped off the front pathway after our top steps and into the grass, the two same cops who had been harassing us for the past few weeks about Baker being off-leash pulled up in front of our house. When they stopped , I pulled Baker inside and into his kennel.

They got out and immediately began writing a ticket for Baker being off-leash. I yelled for Joel to come out of the basement as I went inside to grab my identification and the print out of the District of Columbia Code of Laws.

After the second warning, we decided to look up the laws themselves to find out what they really stated. Here is the Code:

Chapter 18. Animal Control. (Refs & Annos)

§ 8-1801. Definitions. For the purposes of this chapter:

(1)(A) The term "animal at large" means any animal found off the premises of its owner and neither leashed nor otherwise under the immediate control of a person capable of physically restraining it.

So we brought it out to the officers - Smith and XXX, to show us which part of the law we violated. They said it wasn't DC Code that we were violating, it was the District of Columbia's Municipal Regulations or DCMR. We asked what the regulations stated so would know what we were violating.

They weren't able to explain it after we asked twice and then they said they would write me a ticket and if I wanted it explained, I can request a court date and ask a judge to explain it for me. It was a ridiculous encounter and the fact that cops are able to simple check a box for a violation is ridiculous as well. That was not a good way to start out the week.

On Wednesday, May 9th - Joel came home to find this hanging on our first floor bathroom window. Yes, it's a Work Stop Order from the District of Columbia's Department of Regulatory Affairs (DCRA). The form states that under Code Section(s) DCMR 12A 105.1, our violation(s) was "excavating w/o a permit." Luckily, the remedy was only to obtain a new permit.

Unfortunately, this meant that we had to pay a $2,000 fine, obtain and post the required permits and get the approval from the Code Official to remove the Work Stop order.

This required Joel to spend an entire work day at the DCRA offices, waiting to meet face-to-face with a handful of DC officials for a mere 5 minutes before moving to a different line to talk to someone else. After a loss of a days wages and $2,000 later, we settled our case and was able to obtain the permits.

The sad part. Joel was planning to go to the permitting office that next day. Too bad that doesn't work as an excuse. He still made it to the permitting office, but not to get a permit, but to get this Work Stop Order cleared up.

And then on Sunday, May 13th - we had a member of the German Shorthaired Pointer (GSP) Rescue drive by our house to secretly inspect our house. Unfortunately, due to the amount of dirt we've been moving around, the member noted the mounds of dirt and no fence in our yard. So, the Rescue made the decision not to place Lady with us in our house.

I guess we got completely comfortable with the fact that Baker was trained so well with our boundaries, that we didn't have to put up a fence for a long period of time. We used the electric collar to signal his boundaries and he's never run into the street after a ball or after another dog. Although we've lost a lot of balls down the drain, I'd rather have a live dog than a 'Cuz any day.

So the week was really rough on us, especially Joel. It was like one strike after another, all in the same week!