If your dog escapes from your house in sight of a postal worker, you can pretty much forget about getting mail delivered from then on.
My "vicious" cheagle (all 9 lbs of her, Beagle Chihuahua mix), and my son's equally terrifying humongous mutt of 15 lbs, aka queen of the kisser-lickers, raced out my opened front door during a chaotic incident going on inside. They get excited, but do not bite. My two barked at her.
Little girl postal worker must have thought they would eat her. She was not our regular mail carrier. I saw her near the dogs, heard them barking, ordered them inside, and asked her if she was ok, (yes, she was) and did they bite her? She said very simply, "no", then as an afterthought, "Oh, by the way, I pepper sprayed them." That is when I noticed one of the dogs writhing in pain. Then she reported it to headquarters, and black listed us.
Poor babies! http://www.yelp.com/biz_photos/us-postal-service-corona?selected=V8JguFHtpixgGJfOYZEiJA#V8JguFHtpixgGJfOYZEiJA
(Note to self: next time I am pepper sprayed, I will know about using a milk eye wash).
And yeah, I'd bark, too, if you pepper sprayed me.
All right, I get it. Stories of pit bulls and all. But I do think she was a bit trigger happy.
And just so you know, the United Stated Postal Service has dealt with us. The post office policy is completely unforgiving, offering no second chances. We have to go to our local post office to pick up our mail for now. And we get to choose: either 1) get rid of the dogs 2) rent a p.o. box, or 3) place a new mail box out by the curb (where the stream of not-so-well disciplined of Jr. High kids walk home from school each day bantering and tossing trash on our property). Accordingly, never ever in the next bazillion years will a postal service employee step foot on our property.
I apologized to whomever would listen about my dogs' actions, but....has it ever occur to them that their mail deliverers could be mistaken for chopped liver by my or any loose neighborhood dogs, even from our "curb"? The carriers still use the same sidewalk, walking up and down the walkways leading to each of our adjacent neighbors' homes (and they all have dogs too) to deliver mail. The neighbor's mail boxes are closer in proximity to our house than our "new" one will be. So much for reasoning. Not likely that this will ever happen again, as we continue to keep those vicious dogs as well contained as they have been for the first 33 years we lived here, with no incidents.
We spent over a $100 for a new, fancy schmancy mail box, with locking features. And we still beat their annual rental costs for a P.O. box, and the inconvenience of having to drive to get our mail. Yep. Very expensive dogs, but we still love 'em, and so do our meter readers, our contractors, and any other strangers who have had a need to get into our backyard.
Talk about grudges. Don't let your dog piss them off. Consider yourself warned.
In retrospect and for the record, I do appreciate, the two managers I spoke with, Karen and Mr. Nunez. They did not carry an attitude and were very polite. Nice people, frustrating policy. I bet they have a file on me now. =-{ read more