Relocating To Saranac Lake, NY (New York, Pembroke: neighborhoods, school districts, to live in)

[homeward bound]

When your veggies and flowers would be done for the year anyway!

Just during the growing season. At first frost, let the dog in and let the deer reign! (But they *will* stay away well after the dog's inside when it's getting cold.)

I certainly would never advocate subjecting a dog, even a husky, to dangerous conditions. And I don't advocate much chaining up, either. I put in 500+ feet of picket fencing by myself (which our lovely college students love to smash) to keep our old Border Collie mix from having to be a leash. He sleeps inside, too. (We're plagued by drunk frat boys, not deer--and the frat boys have actually reached over our fence to BEAT our old dog with weapons. Wonder why we're movin' ASAP!?!)

The ideal situation, as I see it, is a fenced garden so the dog can't rip and **** it up, and a fenced yard around that, where the dog can roam free, marking away, coming in when it gets too cold for gardens and dog alike. He doesn't have to sleep outside even in nice weather to be an effective garden-guarder for you. Again, just a few nighttime forays by the dog--including one before you go up to bed--can do wonders to ward off the deer. Plus, while deer are of course amazing fence-jumpers, they do NOT like to be within two fences with a dog nearby. Seems to make them feel very vulnerable. They'll head to easier pickings.

[JustSayNo]

Again, I hear ya Homeward, and I respect you. I did not think that you literally were advocating leaving the dog out. the staement was a general couterpoint, or clarification, to balance your statement. I said something to make the point to the average reader-not to slam you or FDNY. Hey we have two German Shepherds that mark the hell out of our land, and while deer is everywhere-very rarely on the property and the only reason I can see is because of the dogs-pee is everywhere! Free pee for allThe coyotes steer clear as well, but are close as we hear them. Again I credit the markings that they smell and we don't!

[homeward bound]

Hmmm. Maybe we can mark the frat-boys who plague us with our dogs' "stuff" and then hang THEM on the fence all winter. They deserve it, and it might keep away other frat boys!

I actually did find an incredibly drunk frat boy hanging on our picket fence early one morning. Apparently his friends had "propped" him there late at night because he was too drunk to walk, and he just slumped over the fence, snoring, until I roused him in the morning. I was almost as amused as I was aggrevated to find him like that, but when I asked him, "Didn't that hurt?" he said, "I'm hungry," puked on himself, and staggered home.

Moral of the story: Move to Saranac Lake (or any of the other thousand beautiful towns of Upstate New York) and NEVER LIVE AMONG COLLEGE STUDENTS AGAIN!

No offense taken, JustSayNo. You were right to stress that caution, and I know we're compadre....

[JustSayNo]

Originally Posted by homeward bound

No offense taken, JustSayNo. You were right to stress that caution, and I know we're compadre....

Thanks my friend, I knew I would get some disagreements, but I am used to that afterall. I have seen too much for too long to not speak up-regardless of the consequences....

Now for your frat boys.........how about a nice night on the porch with a good deterent......hum what could that be?

[nomoresnow]

I'm happy to see you two have made up and are friends again.

As far as a deterent for the frat boys, be careful what you use. A year or two ago, a gentlemen in his late 60's shot a young man who he thought was breaking into his house. Long story short, the young man was a college boy who drunkenly tried to wander into the wrong house (he thought it was where the party was) and ended up dying. The homeowner is now being tried for his murder.

But I digress.... Sorry, mods, if I'm too far off topic.

RET-FDNY, there are certain flowers that you can grow that repulse the deer. Unfortunately, it's a short list, and I don't know what they are. If I hear of anything, I'll let you know.

[homeward bound]

Used to have a BIG scary part-pitbull whom we adopted as a stray puppy 'cause his mom had been run over near our house. He looked like another little Border Collie mix, like our old (and still limping along) dog--until he grew a massive head and jaw seemingly overnight. Turned out he had some Blue Tick Heeler in him, too, and that breed is notorious, I learned, for going after small kids. (Never even knew of the breed until we had this particular dog.) Apparently B.T. Heelers see small kids as a threat to the cattle they were bred to guard, as they see any eye-level-high mammal. Ours bit my best friend's kid and went after another young kid (who luckily avoided injury). We had a baby on the way at the time, too. We tried very hard to give him away to someone who would have NO contact with young kids since, otherwise, and oddly, the dog was great, smart as could be. Ended up having to have him put down--very sad. BUT you should have seen him scare the hell out of the would-be vandals and violent drunks while we did have him! He had a bark like thunder, and was dark enough that when he charged out of the shadows and flung himself on the fence at people starting to vandalize or throw bottles at our house, etc., it would even scare me while I was loving the show.

Alas, he's gone. And I won't own a gun for fear I'd have to use it around here--I've had good reason to have done so if a gun we had. Daddy can't help family escape here if he's in jail, and around here, the town expects us to endure rampaging student drunks without complaint.

Maybe we can throw antlers at them, or deer pies? Pieces of wind turbines?

I should ask this on a separate thread, but does anyone have a sense of in what Upstate college towns the students are best, bearable, worst? We actually would consider moving to a college town again IF the student pop. is relatively small, IF the students are relatively civilized, and IF our neighborhood were solidly UNpopulated by student rentals. The students in Hamilton and Clinton seemed well-behaved to us, but then again, we might have been there on an unusually calm night....

[homeward bound]

Wow, Nomoresnow, I'm surprised, since a big part of the law is "reasonable fear of injury or death" in determining whether even extreme self-defense is justified. Did they expect the elderly gentleman to make the intruder a cup of weak tea, or something?

We had something similar here: Drunk college kid broke into wrong house, owner confronted him, college kid attacked him, owner pushed kid down the stairs to get kid off him and protect his family huddling behidn him, kid broke his neck and died. But the owner was exonerated--not so much because he didn't intend to kill the kid, but because he was simply defending himself and his family from a drunken, aggressive intruder. (I've been lucky to drive out drunks trying to break into our home with words, shoves, and, once, a baseball bat.)

So I'm surprised the elderly gentleman was charged with murder. If he reasonably believed that his life and/or his family's life was at risk by the kid breaking in, and if shooting was what he reasonably thought was his best or only or most immediate and sure way to defend himself, then the charge should be, as I understand the law, quite minimal at worst.

Grim business all around. But shows you what you really do face when you live among today's college students. So many of them are so ruthless when drunk--and so many of them get SO drunk--that it's a dangerous situation. We learned our lesson late but should have known better. Just as you should check out prospective Upstate areas in the worst as well as the best weather to see if you really want to live there, anyone buying in any kind of college town should be sure to check out a possible home during the Thur/Fri/Sat drinking hours--11 p.m. to 3 or 4 a.m., and during home football games if the school has a big football program, to see how unbearable that place might actually be exactly when you're at your most vulnerable and most want and expect peace and quiet.

(Our dilemma was needing to build equity in a very re-sellable (and, in itself, lovely) home so we could have means to move out of here for good. Plus, the previous owner, a notorious student-rental slumlord, was under pressure from the neighborhood's families to sell the place back to a family, so we got a good deal on it.)

[JustSayNo]

Yikes.....first, yes we kissed and made up....and second we are hogging the board and thread....and third I am so tired form digging out today that the cocktails are a warm dream

OK, thank you for taking in the pup in the first place, and doing the RIGHT thing when the situation came up with no options. Instead of dumping at the shelter for a cold death, you and your wife were responsible and had the pup PTS humanly ( I assume and presume) Second....you need a Rottie or a Shepherd-they scare the hell out of most, yet with the right guardian and training are wusses on the inside but fiercly loyal and protective to all that comes near until you give the "off" comand, which results in the comencing of the wussyhood

I completely agree with the gun comment, I was not implying that. Indeed, Daddy can't keep the family happy and moving forwrad from jail all because of a college kid.

Now, your sassyness with the turbines is appreciated, shame on you pushing my obvious buttons bad man! You have read my posts tonight, all of them I see.

Upstate college towns, my quess would be stick to the smaller, private colleges in college towns. I know that in Saratoga Springs we were constantly threatened and asked to keep good neighbors with the neighbors......or else. In my day, there were over 100 bars in that town, needless to say the town was crawling day and night with us bar-crawlers. But, we KNEW to not cause trouble to the townsfolk. But, that was a long time ago and back then we actually respected adults-whoa-

So, nothing against SUNYs, but I would thing avoid those college towns if you are concerned about the overspill. OR, live out of the BAR-ZONE. Generally, avoid the path fromt he town to the campus, and the off-campus housing.

[JustSayNo]

I add, I too am surprised, and a bit concerned over that case. I thought once inside your home, and if you feel threatened, you are allowed to defend yourself.......again that is what German Sheps are for

Yikes, a slippery slope I guess, and indeed makes me remember why I would not live in a college town in town. Sad to all involved, but a little self-control, and less moonshine would have prevented these situations. I feel for all involved

[homeward bound]

Dobermans are good vandalism-stoppers too--at least the two I know who are big babies (one actually pees if you raise your voice around it!). People see them, and know they can leap the fence and go for the throat, and they get verrrry sober very fast. My sister-in-law and also a friend have them and I'm always glad when they're out in our yard.

I can't imagine living up North without a dog, by the way, especially in a more wintry area like Saranac Lake. I think it's one of the great pleasures of living up amid real winters and all those ponds and lakes and rivers. Our old Border Collie mix just loves snow--makes him young again. And getting out to walk the dog and enjoy his love of snow is a great way to fight winter blahs and pounds. He loves the water in the warm weather, too. We'd like to get a lab mix of some sort when we move back up there. Our 2 & 1/2 yr. old boy will throw a stick for a fetching dog for hours, and I think his little brother will follow suit. Some of my happiest memories are traipsing with my dogs across un-foot-printed snow, which was sometimes over their head. I felt like I was discovering Alaska, and the dogs seemed to be in heaven. Once we'd get back inside and warm up, they'd always come and put their heads on my knee and peer up at me and stay close all night. I'd like my kids to experience the same thing--that special post-hike-in-the-snow bond. Plus, when you get a fire going after the hike, the dogs just melt in front of it. It seems to really reach a deep, deep instinct inside them.