My appologies to any of you that work for the US Postal Service.  I have a BIL who is a postmaster and even he could not believe my story!

A little background.....  Hubby and I are empty nesters.  We have signed up for the no-junk mail lists, make sure we read everything we sign and try to limit the junk mail to our house.  This results in us sometimes getting no mail for a day or two.
I was a bit surprised that we had not received any mail last Friday, nor any on Christmas Eve, Saturday.  But we had already received all of the packages and cards I would have expected, so it was not totally unreasonable.  When we did not receive mail on Tuesday, I became suspicious, so I checked with our neighbor to see if they had received mail.  Yes they were getting mail each day.

Hmmmm, I thought..... why are we not getting ANYTHING??  So, I call the Post Office and ask if there was a sub delivering in our area and possibly was not finding our house.  (This has happened before.)  Yes, they said, there was a sub on the route, but wait, the carrier just came in, they will ask if there is a problem.

So I wait, and wait, and wait.  After about 5 minutes on hold, a different person comes on the line - it is the post master.  He informs me that our mail is being held indefinately due to the "viscious dog" that we keep in our front yard.    I'm shocked!   I asked if we had been red carded recently, or was this an old card.  I explained that we USED to have a weimanaurer that had caused trouble once and we had been flagged for that incident, so subs were warned about the dog, but we made a point of not keeping the dog out front during the day when deliveries were possible.  Plus, this dog died 3 YEARS ago and we no longer have anything more dangerous than an algae eating fish.  The postmaster tells me that yes, there is a note from 10 years ago regarding that dog, but a more recent event was what was causing the current hold.

Again, I explained that we did not own a dog, so I was confused as to why the hold.  He insisted that a very dangerous dog was chained in our front yard and our mail would NEVER be delivered again.  We would have to pick it up at the PO and would have to rent a box because of this.  I asked for a description of the dog and the specific date of the incident.  He did not know the date, but said the report described the dog as a yellow lab or retriever.  THAT'S OUR NEIGHBOR'S DOG!! 

The postmaster would not listen to reason.  Meanwhile, the dog owner continues to get their mail delivered (with the dog in the front yard) and we have to pick ours up.  I was soooooo mad.  So I took a picture of our house (with the house number visable) and a picture of the neighbor's house (with the dog in the front yard and their number visable) and took it to the PO. 

Initially, the postmaster would not speak with me, but when I started getting rather loud and insistent, he finally came out.  He admitted to remembering my phone call (that's nice - since it had been only 2 hours earlier!).  I showed him the pictures and asked him to compare the address of the hold with those of the pictures.  He still argued with me that I must own a dog, yet there was no evidence of a dog in the snow in the front yard.

He finally admitted that MAYBE, the carrier got the address wrong.  BUT..... because we had a dog before, the hold would still be in place.  WHAT??!!  I could not believe what I was hearing!  He said that it was out of his control, rules, are rules.  Two major incidences result in a permanent hold.  I argued that the 2nd incident was not even at my house.  I finally took my mail and left (before they threatend to throw me out or call the police on me!)

I called my BIL and told him my story.  Bless his heart, he called someone higher up who gave the official okey dokey to remove the hold on our house.  BUT, we've received official warning, that any more situations with dogs at our house will result in permanent hold on our mail.

On the happy side - I have FINALLY received BOTH pair of my LongLocks sticks, which is probably the only thing that would calm me down at this point. 

Sorry for ranting on like this, but I still cannot believe how STUPID some people can be.

oh, ok. 

Jeweled Garden ArtiStix Special Edition with violet, rose pink, zircon blue and fuchsia floral lampwork tablet bead with Swarovski Blue Zircon bicone crystal and a Swarovski Capri Blue Aurora Borealis bicone crystal.  Absolutely gorgeous!

My info on the other pair is at work.... but they are a beautiful emerald green SprialStix.  When these are combined with my Cherry Red SpiralStix, they are very Christmas-y!

Good Lord, BB    This is a story worth airing - biggest bloobs of the year! If that happens again, I would call the nearest TV station. Let the whole state see what kind of .$%^&#$^% they have sitting in nicely paid positions!

Your sticks sound very pretty 

awwwwww BB. at least you caught the root of the problem. hopefully this wont happen again.

  my God!!! maggie he is such a stupid @$% it leave sme speachless

Especially the...well ALL of them are just not very reasonable, i mean the trash can is in the way...MOVE IT, it's not heavy and some ppl grow ivy around their mail boxes, and they get their mail

How frustrating!  When I was a kid we had a dog and she was soo sweet with a very menacing bark.  She was in the garage, the door was maybe 3 inches open and our mailman refused to bring the mail to the box (this was attatched to the front of the house next to the front door) until the dog was gone.  There is no way she could have gotten to him, so we had to chain her to the willow tree in the back yard.

Out here in AZ, we have mail box centers stratigically placed around the neighborhoods.  I think there's about 24 boxes for individual households and then 4 larger ones for packages that won't fit the smaller ones.  I've lived here 6 years and it still seems strange to me to walk so far to pick up the mail.  I guess it does completely eliminate the dog issue, but thieves have pulled off the back of the boxes and stolen people's mail.  It was really bad for awhile-big concern of identity theft.

In the time we live in now, everything is possible Moonchild...your just a very good person

I was just imagining if that happened to us my dad would be in jail...he has a very, VERY bad temper,

...sometimes is doesn't!  When I first opened my shop a few years ago, I was very busy trying to find suppliers for the different gift items I wanted to carry.  At first I was paying for everything with my business card, but needed to establish credit with these companies, so I had them set me up for "terms", basically they take a chance on billing you and you establish your good credit that way.  Well, my candle company agreed to do this for me, they sent me a bill, and I had the check written out and in the mail the very same day I received it.  Three months later the company calls me, very upset, that my account was outstanding and this was very bad for the first time, I was shocked.  I explained to the lady that the check had been sent out immediately (like she really believed me that the "check was in the mail"!)  I honestly had sent the check out, and they NEVER received it, I was mortified, because that's not how I do things, and it was a terrible thing when you're trying to establish credit as a new business.  Thank you USPS, 'ppreciate it...truly.  That's only one of a few I've encountered here...I could go on & on!