rw-Pools, anyone ever put one in?

Gina, honestly ... in the 20+ years since the pool went in, nobody has EVER just opened the gate and come in the yard without checking first to see if it was OK. The only people that come in unannounced are the pool cleaners and the Terminix dude, and they both like Max and he likes them, so no problems there.  The city might make you put one of those self-closing latch thingys on your gate (it looks like a giant spring) so nobody can ever accidentally leave the gate ajar but that's nothing major.

Joyce

rwbeagles

I am not getting the neighborhood kids thing really. I mean our pool is in our BACK YARD...with a 6' wooden FENCE all around said yard. People do not just enter my yard NOW..and if anyone, child OR adult did so that is a CRIME...it is called "tresspassing" and I would leave it to the police to explain why you do not enter people's yard without permisson. So I don't see how that would ever be an issue. My kids are taught what private property is, and they do not even walk on other people's GRASS unless the street is dangerous...so I guess I do not get that LOL.

Gina - I so wish you were my neighbor or that others were as responsible. We've never had anyone, child or adult, come into our backyard but that's because we have special lockouts to prevent it. I'm not sure we'd have had a problem with them using the pool since they'd have had to deal with the dogs first, but we weren't taking any chances. Just recently I looked out the window and 2 girls around 7 or 8ish were on our side yard pulling all the rose petals off our bushes. I knocked on the window and when they saw me, they ran. I could then see that the group of them were gathering flower petals from every yard in the area and had created a petal pile in the street. Pretty harmless I guess but it still bothered me that they had that little respect for other's property.

The people we know with problems were usually instances of families thinking that getting invited over once was an open invitation to call and invite themselves over or just drop in any time.  When I was a kid, if I wanted to go swimming at my cousins, I called my grandma first because she knew if they were home or at their cottage, and usually if they were at their cottage my grandma would take me (we knew how to do the pool covers and empty the filters and such, plus we could let their dogs out and my grandpa did their yardwork and other chores).  If they were home, we did not go unless they invited us.  There were some days where it would be so ghastly hot we'd just pray for them to call us and they often did.

Where I live now I cannot even have one of those plastic play pools for my dogs, there is just no sense of private property and personal space.  Then if you yell at kids the parents either do nothing or yell at you for yelling at their kids.  I put up a fence for my dogs to keep other people and dogs OUT.  Last week I chased some little girls off because they were throwing pop rocks over my fence at my dogs.  Two summers ago I had a lot of agility equipment setup because I was going it with Kenya and every night after dark kids would come over and fool around, knocking stuff over.  We wanted to get a trampoline but there's just no way I wouldn't have a dozen neighborhood kids on it acting like wild monkeys unless I could put up a locked 6' privacy fence.

LOL Cathy...we (general parent we) tend to school our kids on OUR pet peeves seems like. I hate...HATE when children get onto my property, tromp thru it, or disrespect it. Seriously it makes me FUME. That old man saying "get offa my lawn!!" that's me in drag! I have gone over to many a house to tell the parents that their kid is ABSOLUTELY NOT to hang over, stick items thru etc my fence. I am HOME and I will catch you...LOL!

But honestly it's one of the most important lessons a child should learn IMO...it feeds into many other aspects of life.