Well as much as I love country livin and my neighbors, it's not always picture perfect.  Some of you all may remember a post a month or so ago about hard lessons on the farm.  Well we tried finding Hank another home and couldn't.  We decided to just start keeping him inside the house or putting him in the garage at night.  We just couldn't take him to the animal shelter.  The neighbor said something that we *thought* meant that he no longer wanted us to get rid of Hank.

Well today we found out differently.  Today was my birthday and we spent the morning in Nashville where Joe's football team was recognized before the Music City Football game.  Now, you have to know that both Tony's & my dads have passed away.  Our neighbor across the street (who detests Hank) has kind of taken Joe under his wing and is a kind of grandfatherly figure.  They shoot trap, duck hunt, fish and work around the yard together.  But, our neighbor can also be very gruff and self centered at times too unfortunately.

Anyway, we get home this evening and Joe is so excited that he wants to ask Danny if he watched the game and taped it for us.  Danny explained that he couldn't get the channel, but then went on to say that he was either going to shoot Hank or call the sheriff because he was barking and keeping him up at night.  Poor Joe was in shock.  He hated to upset me since it was my birthday, but had to tell his dad.  Then Tony had to tell me so that we could talk about how to handle the situation.

It is just SO difficult.  Here we go and buy 44 acres and only have 1 neighbor in sight... and while they can be wonderful neighbors sometimes, they seem to just have it out for this dog.  They blame him for anything that goes on.  We've kept the dog inside since that last issue.  We only left him out on Christmas Eve when we had company.  Unfortunately our neighbor also had company and supposedly our dog barked and kept them up all night.  They never called to tell us.  We didn't notice the barking.  They just sprung it on my son unexpectedly tonight. 

Scripture says "Love your neighbor as yourself" and "as much as it is in your power, live in peace with all men".  so I gues Hank has to go.  As much as we love him, we can't deal with all of this discord.  It has broken Joe's heart because our neighbor seems to not care about our feelings and really seems to want control in this issue.  It worries him that he will always try to "control" whatever animals we have.  The  2 younger boys are gone to my mom's house right now so we may try to get rid of Hank before they get home.  It's just so difficult. 

So, lest I make country life sound idealic, I just had to be honest about the issues that we still have to handle.  Please pray that God will provide a good home for Hank and help us to love our neighbor even when he doesn't deserve it!