Menace to Society

Every time I walk Bruce (which has significantly decreased since the birth of Ollie) he loses his cool when he sees other dogs, joggers, cars, anything basically that he wants to pay attention to him.  I constantly scold him, tug his leash forward and tell him he is a menace.  If the offense is really bad I pick him up, try as I might to clamp my hand over his smushed little muzzle and tell him to be quiet (let's be serious I'm not so nice at this point and tell him to "shut it") as I walk embarrassed and frustrated home.  Today Bruce's menace rank was taken to a whole new level when I received a nicely threatening letter from South Bend Code Enforcement Department of Animal Control.  See, when I let Bruce in our backyard he is usually content to pee on things, stinky roll, lounge in the grass.  Unless of course Lucy, the rat terrier next door is also in her backyard or if Mildred's son's are mowing her yard in the house behind us or if Angie and Aaron are enjoying their beautiful patio on the other side of our house.  Then Bruce loses his cool.  I try to squirt him in the face with the squirt bottle but usually have to traipse through the grass and abscond this law breaking citizen.  The letter I received game lots of suggestions on why my dog is barking (none of which applied to him) and how to stop it (get a book from the library on training your dog! or better yet, take him to obedience class!, Bruce did very well in his obedience class thankyouverymuch he won second place in the sit stay contest and was bested only by a German Shepherd.) So thank you concerned/aggravated neighbor for your understanding of my situation; a baby, some dogs and a husband who IS NEVER HOME allows me much time to make sure I'm not doing anything to offend you.  I'll get right on sending in my documentation of vaccination/neutering/microchipping so as not to incur fines and further violations.
Have I mentioned how much I "love" our neighborhood association?  I'm not sure what these people are doing with their lives as they have time to schedule meetings, write reports, send mailings and warnings all rampant with grammatical errors (not sure about the meetings, just can't bring myself to go to one of those).  Look, I know my lawn isn't the nicest and my dogs can be noisy but I PICK UP THEIR POOP.  Maybe somebody should get angry with those people who let their huge dogs run and poop everywhere.  OR MAYBE THAT CRAZY OLD BAT WHO LIVES TWO DOORS DOWN SHOULDN'T BE GOING THROUGH OUR MAIL SO SHE CAN TELL OUR NEIGHBORS THAT "A DOCTOR LIVES THERE!" I'M PRETTY SURE MAIL TAMPERING IS A FEDERAL OFFENSE BUT I understand how my dog peeing in your yard and our yard being slightly brown is terrible.
End rant. Stay tuned for next week when the Johnsons get a code violation for their lawn!