How odd that yesterday, just 30 minutes after I posted my blog entry, I should get a knock at the door from the self proclaimed faith healer neighbor. She stayed for an hour, then had to leave to pick up her daughter from school. I thought I was safe, but she ended up coming back at 3:30 with her daughter in tow and stayed until 6:30pm. During the course of the conversation I made mention to her (again) that her black dog was touched in the head since she seemed to bark at the breeze. She admitted (again) that the dog was annoying, but what could she do. She did tell me some new info that I didn’t know. It seems that one of the main reasons the 2 girls, that lived in the house next to her, moved was because of her black dog barking non-stop. She actually has two dogs. Dog #1 (Abby) has been there about 5 years now and rarely barks. Dog #2 (Sasha) has been there only since last summer and is 2 years old. Sasha is the non-stop barker. The faith healer neighbor stated that she was so glad when those girls moved because they were coming up to her almost every weekend begging her to stop the dog from barking non-stop and claiming that the dog was keeping them awake at night. The nerve of them! She told them they needed to get ear plugs like she wears, then they would be able to get a good nights sleep, like she does.


She also told me that her sons girlfriend gave the dogs steak bones last Saturday. They immediately got into a very serious dog fight over the bones. Her husband tried to separate them by hitting them with a board but that did no good. Running the hose on them did no good either. They had to wait until the dogs stopped fighting. By this time Sasha had a tear in her tongue and Abby had bite marks on her neck and leg and was limping. My regret is that the dogs didn’t bite the faith healer and her husband. Maybe that would have sunk some sense into them. So did these upstanding citizens take their dogs to the vet? Of course not. It is God’s will whether the dogs should live or not. And since they are recovering nicely from their wounds God obviously meant for them to be okay. She did tell me that she was thinking about giving the dogs some shots since they had bit each other. Neither dog has ever had any shots. A trip to the vet you say? No, a trip to the local farm and home store for something she called a shot kit that costs $5. But first she has to save up for it.

Why can’t the self proclaimed faith healer neighbor just pull out $5 right now and buy the shot kit since she doesn’t have a mortgage payment or car payment like most adults have. (Her elderly mother bought their house for them, paying cash and bought Deb a mini van as well). It seems that her husband hasn’t worked since last September. He has his own construction business and she tells me that no one is building houses anymore. News to me and I am sure it is news to all of the other construction workers I see building houses and office buildings each day. Deb is even on the payment plan at the local video store for her late fees. She owes $48 in late fees (because she keeps forgetting to return movies) so she pays them $2 a week towards the late fees, all the while renting 5 or 6 movies a week. It’s all about priorities you know. Meanwhile she has to save her pennies so she will someday be able to afford the 45 shot kit. People like that should not be allowed to own dogs. The dogs have even chewed all of the bark off of the one tree in the back yard. They either think the tree is one big chew toy or else dinner.

The faith healer’s daughter is ten years old, soon to be eleven. My granddaughter is six soon to be seven. The two girls enjoy playing with each other. I mentioned to the faith healer that my granddaughter would be spending the night Wednesday night and perhaps her daughter would like to come over and play Wednesday afternoon. She said that would be great, but to make sure that the girls don’t do anything strenuous like ride bikes or anything because her ten year old 175 pound daughter has high blood pressure and she is afraid that if she does anything too strenuous she might have a heart attack. Hello, that is called exercise and it usually helps a persons blood pressure go down, not up. The mind of a hill-billy is a scary thing.