The situation:

I was up at mom's property, I dunno, was it 3 weeks ago?  I was leaving, getting the dogs in the car to take them home.
There is only one way those giant dogs fit into the back seat of that car to make it comfortable for both of them.  It takes quite a bit of "arranging" to do and it also takes the cooperating of the dogs to get it done.

So, I had put Prince in first and had him perfectly situated, telling him to stay, stay, stay while I went and got Duke.  When I came back, Prince got up, turned around headed out of the car.  Now I have Duke in hand and Prince needing to be put back into correct position.

Prince is a big baby.  He whines and sometimes "cries" when things aren't going his way.  I just let go of Duke, got back into the car and had to move the dog physically because he refused to move back into position.  It does NOT mean I was hurting him, but he starting his whining/crying junk again.  Loudly.  A big dog, a big mouth.  Mother was walking by the car as this was happening.

I knew she had taken issue with it when I got the dogs in and left - she just kept walking with her back towards me.  I hadn't called her in almost 3 weeks because I knew that the next time I talked to her, she was going to say something and more to the point: it was going to be a caustic interaction even if I tried to avert it.

Which I did try.  I really did.  I called her today and got the conversation rolling, we talked a few minutes and then? She went there.  Blah blah blah.  You were hurting Prince, I didn't feel comfortable with it.  I did cut her off once and nicely tried to get her to take this conversation elsewhere, because I can tell you right now that I take extreme offense to anyone even remotely insinuating that I am some sort of animal abuser.  I have had dogs all of my life and have always taken very good care of them.  When Coco was dying a while back I poured my heart and energy out to doing whatever I could to save her, including draining my bank account and running up credit card debt which I am still paying off.

The conversation did not end well.   I decided that if she doesn't like the way I treat my dogs, then my presence up there on her property and bringing my dogs up there is not going to work out. I informed her I would not be coming up there anymore and that when I could, I would have the trailer moved off the property.  I was very offended at the way she was talking to me.  She didn't give me the opportunity to explain what was actually happening in the car, instead she just concluded that I was intentionally hurting the dog.

So that's it.  It will undoubtedly be quite a while before we talk again.  We have had issues before about different things in the past and this is pretty much modus-operandi.

It hasn't really been such a great ending to my vacation. Besides that, I have spent 3 hours today sweating my @$$ off attempting to get the pond situation rectified.  More fish have died.  I had to remove the fish and then I had to find that small pump I have and try to get it to work on the big waterfall filter.  I figured that any kind of filtering at all is bettering than nothing.  It's a 125 gallon per hour pump, so every 3 plus hours that pumps the entire contents equivalent through that filter.  I emptied out about a third of the water in it and replaced it with fresh water and rearranged the aerators so that they would hit a larger area of the water.  I had to clean out the other larger pond filtering system as well.  Plus I had the refrigerator I bought off of Craigslist which died on me and spent another $200 getting it fixed.  It IS working well now at this point, I finally get the temp to stay at a constant 37 degrees, pretty much in the target range.

But it has all worn me out.  Instead of going back to work refreshed, I guess it will be pretty much the same as when I left for vacation.  I think, actually, I am ready for the "distraction" of work at this point.  I may not be ready to get up at 4:30 am, guess I'll find that out when 4:30 rolls around and the alarm clock goes off.

The situation with mother is troubling.  Had I had any thought that there would be this kind of problem, I would not have bought that trailer and spent the months I did in fixing it up.  I now have yet one more situation on my hands that has to be dealt with.  But I don't have the money to spend on moving it down here right now and if she wants it off the property badly enough, she will have to pay for it's removal to wherever herself, the nearest towing yard I guess, which would be in Star Valley.  It would be a lost cause for me, as paying for the tow there, plus storage, plus moving it to wherever else temporarily would be out of the question right now.  Would she do that?  Uhhh, yes, if it irked her enough, she would.

ben