Tell son to keep dogs on a leash

DEAR AMY: My son lives two houses away from us. He has two big dogs that are in our front yard all the time. We have small dogs that stay in the house. When my son's dogs are in our yard, our dogs start barking at them and leaping at the windows. I hate to tell my son to keep his dogs inside -- or turn him in. There is a leash law here, but they don't enforce it. What do I do to keep from getting mad? This barking is driving me crazy. The leaping at the windows is destructive to my windows, the curtains and to me.

--Worried Mom

DEAR MOM: Your son is violating the local leash law, the unspoken law of respect between neighbors and -- hello -- the most important law of all, which is to be nice to your mother. You should tell your son that this is driving you and your dogs crazy. Ask him to respect the neighborhood and keep his dogs contained or on a leash.

If his dogs are running around the neighborhood, they could also damage neighborhood property, injure people or other pets, or get hit by a car.

But you don't have to point out any of this. You just have to ask him to please keep the dogs confined on his property.

DEAR AMY: I am a 13-year-old girl responding to "Self-Made," whose mother and sister wouldn't help out around the house. You suggested a "chore chart." When my family moved, our new house was considerably larger than our old one. My mom made a card with cleaning steps for each room in the house, and every Saturday we take turns getting different sets of cards. I never get stuck cleaning the same rooms every week, and we're left with a very satisfactory house.

--Clean House

DEAR CLEAN: I love this idea! It has everything: creativity, variety and putting-the-kids-to-workity!

DEAR AMY: I read the letter from "Helpful Grandma," the grandparent whose grandchildren posted questionable photos on Facebook. I remembered my grandmother's advice: If I made a funny face or stuck my tongue out, she told me that if I kept it up, my face would freeze that way -- forever. This was decades before the Internet existed. Now that we have Facebook, it turns out she was right! How prophetic.

--Prophetic Wisdom

DEAR WISDOM: Facebook has been around long enough now that I think we're starting to see a cohort of early adapters who are confronting evidence of their young foolishness.

And how much do we hate to say, "We told you so"? (Not very much.)