Danielle and Mohamed Abdelmegid thought they had found a place where they could settle down and rear their two children.
But months after the family moved into the Pasadena neighborhood, says Mrs. Abdelmegid, 24, neighbors in the 7700 block of Edgewood Ave. have shouted obscenities and racial slurs at her and her children, destroyed her property and called the county Animal Control to pick up her gray Keeshond dog.
Neighbors say the problems have nothing to do with the fact that Mrs. Abdelmegid is white and her husband is Egyptian. The problem, they say, is with the Abdelmegids' dog. They are concerned that Princess is roaming the street and could get hit or hurt small children.
The trouble started during the summer, Mrs. Abdelmegid said, when a neighbor complained about Princess being out of the yard. After the Abdelmegids fenced in their yard, they felt the problem would be solved, but Princess still got out.
"When I was here, she'd stay in the yard, but when I'd leave and come back, she'd be gone," Mrs. Abdelmegid said. "We dug up the ground around the fence and put in cinder blocks so she couldn't dig her way out, and we tied the gate up with string, and she still would get out."
Meanwhile, neighbors began calling animal control to pick up the animal.
Mrs. Abdelmegid said the family has had to get Princess out of the pound six or seven times, paying $33 each time.
Confrontations with her neighbors also intensified, she said.
"They called us [racial slurs] and told us they didn't want us living here," Mrs. Abdelmegid said.
One day, after running errands, Mrs. Abdelmegid returned to see her fence door in the driveway.
She called the police.
She said an officer talked to her "for two minutes" and told her he couldn't do anything.
She also called police when her husband backed into a hole in their gravel driveway.
The Abdelmegids believe someone dug the hole.
Mr. Abdelmegid said the police told him they had no witnesses and again could do nothing.
After that incident, she said, someone called the county environmental code enforcement office to report the hole.
A complaint that she filed with the county commissioner was denied for "lack of probable cause" that a crime had been committed, according to county documents.
After seeking advice from Annapolis Alderman Carl O. Snowden, Mrs. Abdelmegid is gathering information to file a complaint with the U.S. Justice Department.
"I don't think this is a racial thing," said Juanita Stringer, one of Mrs. Abdelmegid's neighbors. "If there's bigots in this neighborhood, they've kept it pretty secret. I think that there has been a personality conflict, and maybe it has mushroomed."
She, too, blamed the problem on the dog and said Princess "has never stayed in that yard."
Mrs. Stringer said she has seen Princess open the fence gate by nudging the lever with her nose. Another neighbor said she has seen the small dog squeeze underneath the fence.
Mrs. Stringer said she thought the neighborhood dispute heated up after Thanksgiving when Princess ran between an elderly neighbor's legs and tripped her.
Since then, there have been shouting matches.
"We've never had a neighborhood where there's been screaming," said Mrs. Stringer, adding that she could not believe anyone would use racial slurs toward the children. "I don't see why there's so much tension."
Mrs. Stringer said she and her husband have lived on the street for 23 years and have never seen any racist attitudes from neighbors toward her multicultural guests.
Mr. Abdelmegid said he just wants the bickering to stop.
"I don't want any trouble for anybody," he said. "I want peace for everybody."