This has always been a bit tricky.
I have a friend who works an alternative schedule in a hospital. We all know that the world needs these people.
My friend can generally be a bit … unreasonable. She’s complained before about kids playing basketball, kids making noise playing outside, dogs barking a few times at delivery people coming to the door (not for hours at a time).
Cities and counties generally have noise ordinances. Dog barking is typically covered if it goes on for a long period of time - not a couple of barks at 10 am, 2 minutes of barking at 11 am, etc. I know that would make sleeping very difficult, as would the neighbors heading out to play a pick up game of basketball if you’d worked all night the night before. It just tends to be that the noise laws are written so that people have more latitude during waking hours and we expect some noise during waking hours. It can be difficult, but I wouldn’t feel comfortable asking my neighbor to keep their dog from barking at all during waking hours, or to not play basketball or have kids shrieking outside, because of my schedule. If the neighbors are behaving within the local laws, then I think that’s their right. IMO if we are going to complain about neighbor noise, the first thing to do is to look up the laws that we are living under and ask if they’re actually doing something they shouldn’t be. If not, I wouldn’t ask. People have the right to enjoy their property under the laws we live under.
Marla, I have some stockade fencing and some chain link, and with a barking dog, no critters except squirrels come in. They are outsid tho, and when I take the old dog in the car, she goes down the driveway, carefully smelling whatever critters have been there!
At her age she may be developing diabetes. That is a lot of water and no wonder she can’t hold it.
You might try those puppy training pads? My Aunt used them for her older dog who developed incontinence issues and it saved her floors.
It is so hard as they get old.
I have stockade also and I’m still shocked at what has or might come in. Central Florida, we have regular bobcat sightings in our neighborhood, less frequent bears - though one took out a small section of older stockade one night and another appeared in my front porch mid afternoon. There have been possums including one that was really dead, snapping turtles, other turtles, feral cats, a raccoon or two, snakes, one armadillo. Just a few weeks ago mom and dad whistling ducks with a dozen little buggers came strolling down the back hill. . I think the babies squeezed thru the bars on the gate, but parents flew over the fence. Thankfully no gators but there are a couple in the lake across the road.
I think she’s only saying ‘be kind,’ meaning be thoughtful in general, not ‘tell your cows and kids to be silent on my schedule.’ If I lived in a neighborhood and knew my next-door neighbor worked nights, I would be kind enough to not mow my grass at 8AM (or whenever I knew would be super annoying). It doesn’t mean I would tell my kids (who don’t actually exist LOL) to be silent when it’s light out LOL
I worked nights for a few years. Black out blinds and ear plugs are your friends. Not even hear nothing ear plugs, just enough to muffle all but a loud alarm going off next to me.
I would not expect a neighbor to keep animals in for 12 hours at a time for me. I would expect them to train their dogs not to bark excessively at everything. Most noise ordinances are for dogs barking for more than 10-15 minutes straight. I reported a neighbor for their mini-pins multiple times. She would just yell at them and they would bark louder. She also left them out for hours at a time on her upper deck where they would pee and poo down onto her lower deck. Tiny upper deck so they were laying and walking in it too. I’m pretty sure the guy that owned it evicted them eventually because they were destroying the place. I haven’t seen them in at least a year.
Agreed. This is probably the last thing I would try for barking. I don’t think dogs should be left unattended with a muzzle on unless it’s a basket muzzle, which would obviously not work for this either.
OP curious why you aren’t going to try a bark collar?
Thank you very much for your suggestion. But it would only be on for a short window, 8-10 pm, and he isnt outside or barking that whole time. I am also concerned that my being a bit clumsy, might not get it adjusted correctly. Closing the back door at 8 seems to be working so far. The cats aren’t happy about this. They like to go prowling about 4 am. I would rather they stay in anyway.
I have lots of experience with a dog that barks way too much. The citronella collar worked for a couple of weeks until he got used to the scent. I tried a couple of those ultrasonic devices but they were ineffective on the barker and upset the other dog. Now we use a Petsafe brand shock collar. We find that just putting it on reminds him not to bark and keeps him calm. We’ve been using it for several years. I suggest buying one of those and putting it on the dog during the evening. I’m so happy to hear that you and your neighbour are discussing this like rational people rather than engaging in passive-aggressive behaviour, which seems to be becoming the norm. Good luck!
Everyone should be inside at night. Especially the cats.
Do you walk your dogs? Sounds like they need a good walk routine to stop the pooping and peeing inside. I would also have the kidneys checked on your female.
I can sympathize here. I have a hound dog and he has quite the trumpet howl. I realize that it reverberates and can be very loud, so we try to keep him as contained as possible. That being said, our community has barking rules… so we can get fined if he barks/howls for more than 15 mins during daytime hours, more than 5 minutes from 9pm-7am, and/or a total of 90 mins per day.
Our backyard nemesis (he is no longer considered a neighbor) is the way we found out. Because apparently I accidentally left my doggie door open when I left the dog for 2 hours and he must have been outside barking/howling, bc I got a “warning” from animal control because instead of talking to me about it, he called and made a report.
The man has repeatedly yelled and cursed at me last year when my dog would go out an howl for even 30 seconds at 7pm or for even 2 minutes at 1pm in the afternoon. He sits with his sliding glass door half open at his kitchen counter. He’s 63 and I feel like it is his goal in life to terrorize us. Even if it was the first time the dog was out in yard all day because he was with me out and about. My husband has had to tell him to stop bullying me and the dog. It’s pretty awful. We had to build an additional privacy fence around a small deck and put cameras up that faced the fence that we shared bc we don’t trust him.
Guy only picks on me and has figured out when my husband works at night or isn’t home. He stands at the back sliding door and videos the dog trying to catch him barking long enough to lodge a complaint, bc I’m pretty sure after my husband had a loud and direct conversation about how he was to go back inside and not harass his wife or dog any longer, he decided he was hell-bent on getting us fined.
We live in a beautiful house in a lovely community and now I just can’t wait for us to be here for 2 years to put the house up for sale and get the hell out. He’s awful and he has added so much stress to our family during a time where being in healthcare was bad enough. It makes the situation even worse because the dog feels the stress and escalation and reacts to it. So even when he’s inside, it’s high intensity and it takes practically the rest of the night to chill him out.
So yeah… I get that the truck driver needs his sleep. If you’ve got the budget, maybe buy him a white noise machine or offer to pay for an app? Explain that you’re doing the best that you can and that you’re dealing with an elderly dog with some health challenges and that you get overwhelmed at times. Ask for patience and try to keep the peace. At least they sound nicer than the jerk that lives behind us.
That’s terrible. I feel so bad for you. You shouldn’t have to move.
Your neighbor must be a very unhappy human being. Is he lonely do you think? I wonder why he is so miserable. Is he mean to everyone or just women?
Can you video him with your cell phone, recording audio as well when he is being mean to you?
Thank you for your kindness and empathy.
You’re absolutely correct… we shouldn’t have to move. We pay as much in taxes as his crabby butt and we bought a home in the suburbs with a nice-sized yard and a privacy fence and surrounded by other dogs so that he would be happy.
Sadly, that miserable SOB is just a mean, Polish immigrant that does not like animals and thinks that his neighborhood should operate like a retirement community. He is not alone… he’s married and his wife has proven to be just as sucktacular.
Ironically, after I typed this first post earlier this month, I had to call the sheriff on him 2 days later because he started up again about how my dog should NEVER bark in the yard. Why was he barking? Oh because the man decided to start painting his side of the fence that splits our yard at dusk. No heads-up… no warning. Then acts aghast when the dog comes out barking at him. They implied that the dog has “volume issues” which is why they don’t like him and are fine with every other dog in the neighborhood. I kindly invited them to come over and have a discussion with him if they thought they could communicate volume to a dog. I also reminded them that all of this could have been simply solved by just a note on my door or in my mailbox and I would have kept him inside during that timeline. They shot back with “Oh so now we have to ask your permission! NEVER!”. Riiiight. They also told me that my dog was responsible for the guy’s heart attack. Not his large gut, poor diet, possible genetics, or general anxious and curmudgeon personality… the DOG.
So I just gave up and called the sheriff… told them that I was sick of them doing things to antagonize my dog and then clutching their pearls about his reactions… and that they were harassing me as well… and that I had it all on our yard cameras if there was any question and that we were leaving for FL in a week or 2, so to just leave me alone. Deputy sheriff was more than happy to go over there and tell them to leave me alone after I broke down all of the lovely things they said to me :).
Moral of the story: Get yard cameras. Know your neighborhood restrictions and laws. Stay in the good graces of your county sheriff.
He really is a piece of work. He blames your dog for his heart attack? What an extraordinary thing to even think of saying.
Good for you to call the sheriff. A paper trail is always helpful. I hope you have someone to keep an eye on your house while you are in FL.
We got the Sport Dog collar for Zoe. We haven’t had neighbor problems but she gets so “into” her barking that it will go on for long after the target of the barking (neighbors in their own yards, the UPS truck, landscape crews, people out for a stroll) is gone. It is an ear-piercing, shrill bark and it never fails but she starts up when I am on a work call. It’s a daytime thing with her, when she can see things.
We have tried distraction and praise when she’s quiet, but if we don’t see the trigger before she does then the chance for positive reinforcement is gone.
Today is her first day wearing it. The painter, who has been here for the past 3 days and now is her friend, arrived. Bark…louder bark and then a surprised yelp. Later he left the house to go get something out of his truck, and the scenario repeated itself. This collar ramps up the stim level as the barking continues, though it will reset itself after 80 seconds of uninterrupted bark-stim-bark-stim for safety reasons.
Some people just showed up a few minutes ago to purchase some stained glass supplies SO sells, and she alerted quietly by just jumping up at the door. I made sure to praise her effusively. She’s pretty smart so hopefully it won’t take long for her to figure it out. Of course there are times we want her to bark - like the time she let us know that someone was in the driveway helping themselves to the contents in my car (I really hope they enjoyed the bag of sweat-soaked workout clothes they stole, lol). The hope is that she learns that collar on = no bark.
She does seem a little downcast but I think part of that is she’s getting used to wearing the collar.
Oh, and @Tini_Sea_Soldier1, your neighbor is a jerk. May his pillow never have a cool side and his hallways all be dark and strewn with Legos.
Our neighbors are awesome and they all hate him. So there’s definitely a “neighborhood watch”.
HAHA… there’s a song called “I’ll Pray for You”.
Lyrics go:
"I pray your brakes go out runnin’ down a hill
I pray a flower pot falls from a window sill
And knocks you in the head like I’d like to
I pray your birthday comes and nobody calls
I pray you’re flyin’ high when your engine stalls
I pray all your dreams never come true
Just know wherever you are, honey, I pray for you"
It’s essentially what I think whenever I see his miserable face.
My favorite saying to people like your neighbor: “May your own life be your punishment”. They may not know it, but these are the people no one likes, no one offers a hand, no one goes out of their way to be kind or help them because they are so nasty. That dark cloud of bad karma follows them wherever they go. They just don’t get it!
Very good point. And I’ve noticed so many of them, as they age, have no one- even their own children- who give a damn to help them out. We earn what we get.
Our neighbors on one side are like this. They’re known as Those (insert one of many adjectives) Hawaiians, because they are from Hawaii and used to spend large chunks of the year there. Everyone wishes they still would.
The wife spies on everyone from a front window. One of the other neighbors has a portable basketball goal (we’re in a cup-de-sac), and when some kids from down the street came over to shoot baskets, she drove them away by videoing them. Creeped them out. Same neighbor put in a pool last summer, and Those Hawaiians had plenty to say about that; they called to report him for not having a permit (he did), among other things. The Hawaiians are older with no kids, so it’s not like they were worried about it from a safety standpoint, The general consensus is that Hawaiians are griped about the pool because it meant visiting kids which means noise.
SO got into it with them years ago, before I came on the scene, when he caught the husband dumping antifreeze in the street. Cops were called, it was ugly. Now Mr. Hawaii behaves himself, because he knows that the consequences of being a jerk will be painful and expensive: one call to Code Enforcement and the illegal outbuilding and ugly fence are coming down.
Recently I accidentally set off the alarm in SO’s truck. All of the markings on the key fob are rubbed off so I couldn’t figure out how to turn it off. I was about to call SO (he was out on a repair job in the big truck), then I saw Mr. Hawaiian come out on his front porch, obviously irritated by the noise. I just drove away, knowing the alarm would stop eventually but if in the meantime it annoyed that cretin, so much the better.
