I reading about the debate that constantly rages about pets in strata corporations late last night and fell asleep with an image of dogs playing pool in my head causing me to have a very strange strata dream where roles were reversed on this vexed issue.
In my dream the dogs and cats were the strata owners and they kept humans in their apartments as pets and helpers to feed and bathe them, chauffeur them around town, to keep the apartment clean, to clean up after them, and to amuse them by throwing things, patting them and just generally paying attention to the animals whenever they barked or purred.
Overall things worked pretty well for the dogs and cats (and also for the humans) in their strata building until a new dog called Max moved in.
You see, Max didn't like humans and didn't keep one as a pet He spent a lot of time out enjoying himself, relied on home delivery for his meals and wasn't particularly concerned with cleaning up his apartment or his faeces. Initially, he wasn't too fussed about the other dogs and cats keeping human pets but as the weeks passed they became far more annoying to him.
The humans would often yell out to each other and the other dogs and cats - the small humans were particularly annoying; yelling and screaming more often and in more shrill and piercing tones. They'd also drive their cars recklessly around the building areas and park them everywhere; ruining many of his favourite sniffing and peeing spots. He'd also often overhear their conversations which became increasingly maddening to him; they often spoke to each other about the same things over and over, said illogical things and often changed their mind about things. And, lastly they kept bringing out bags of smelly things from the apartments and leaving them in bins near the entrance to the building; Max thought the stuff smelt good but he could couldn't get into the bins to eat it.
After a month or two he decided that the humans were doing all these things on purpose to get back at him. So, he started yelling back them whenever he saw them - barking madly at them until they were out of his sight. This only seemed to make things worse as he now also overheard them talking to each other about him.
So, Max decided to try to get the strata by-law changed to stop the humans in the building ruining his lifestyle. The by-laws banned their most annoying human behaviours and gave the cannine-feline committee the power to require humans to leave the strata building. And, he'd contacted me for some advice and help with his plans ahead of the next general meeting.
I woke up from my dream in the midst of a meeting with Max where I was telling him that he'd never get enough proxies to pass the necessary special resolution and he was barking at me and reminding me of the dog that became condo president in Florida last year.
After waking it occurred to me that what's acceptable (or not) in shared strata living depends so much on your personal perspective that we can't be too dogmatic (sorry) about things and must understand that these kinds of compromises will always challenge strata owners and residents.
And, I'm glad that my dog doesn't read this blog.
Francesco ...
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