Hi everyone,

I would like some suggestions on dealing with a neighbor who has a
chronically barking dog at night. Unfortunately, I live in a rural
area, and as a result, there really isn't much of anything on the books
on animal control issues. We don't even have an animal control officer
down here at the moment. A little bit of background on the situation.
In the past, I've made it clear to the neighbor that the situation
with his dogs is creating a nuisance, but he made it perfectly clear
that he doesn't care who it bothers. He said, in response to my
comment about the annoying barking of his dogs at night, "dogs bark,
that's what they do." I study every night, and I play piano, and it's
very unnerving and distracting to say the least to hear these dogs bark
like that every single night, especially when all the neighbor had to
do was take better care of the animals to alleviate the situation.

Because of the neighbor's attitude, I decided to take other action,
and it was recommended to me on this group about a year ago that I pick
up a device called "good neighbor barker breaker" to curtail the
barking problem. Well, this really raised the neighbor's ire, and he
started yelling stuff over the fence and calling the cops saying I was
disturbing the peace by bothering his dogs. To him, it's OK if I'm
being flooded by the noise of his dogs every single night, but he
obviously doesn't like it when someone blares noise in his direction.
To make a long story short, my landlord was contacted by a deputy, and
I was then informed by the landlord that I better stop setting that
device out there. And I was told to no longer tell the neighbor's
anything about keeping their dogs quiet, or else I'd face legal action.
I was really angry about this as it was really unfair, to say the
least. I sent a written complaint to the sheriffs department, and I
said that the neighbor is the one who has created the nuisance, and I
was in my bounds. For a while, after all of this transpired, the
neighbors did start keeping their dogs quiet, but now it's back to
where it was before. I wanted to take the neighbors to court after
this incident, but the landlord wouldn't let me do it.

At the moment, this neighbor has one of his rottweiller's barking every
single night from 7:30pm to 9:30 at night. Last night it went on till
11:00 pm. The neighbor's are there, but of course they don't do
anything to shut it up, even though they know that it bothers people
around them. I have no idea what is wrong with this dog and why it
barks like that. It's not even really barking, it's more like
whining...and it's extremely annoying. There is no barking all day
long, but when it comes around that time, it all starts up. Is
barking like that pretty common place? No other dogs in the
neighborhood are barking like that, at least not constantly for 2 hours
or more a night. It would seem that, to cut down the dog's distress,
the neighbor's should feed their dogs when they get home at 7pm,
instead of waiting till late at night. But like I said, they don't
care about others around them.

I'm not sure what I should do about this. I don't have the money to
move, even though that would be great. I have heard that what some
people do is record the dog's barking, and play it back over a
loudspeaker for the offending neighbor at 2:00am to wake them up. Has
anyone tried this? Has anyone tried this over a boom box? I just
want to give this neighbor a taste of his own medicine, to see how he
likes it. since the neighbors don't respect me, I sometimes set a
boombox outside near their fence line and blare loud music outside so
they can hear it at night or in the morning, but maybe I should tape
record the dogs and do it. I'm just curious what suggestions some of
you have on dealing with this kind of problem? Maybe I'm not going
about it the right way.

Don't call the sheriff, look in to you local ordenences and codes, you
should be able to find them on the local goverment website, and find
the noise or barking dog rules, where I live if an owner is unable to
stop his dog from barking, animal control considers the dog out of
control and will remove it.

Also look up your local animal contol and see if they a section on
barking dogs.

Jack

On 20 Jun 2006 12:16:24 -0700 whittled these words:
Hi everyone,

I would like some suggestions on dealing with a neighbor who has a
chronically barking dog at night. Unfortunately, I live in a rural
http://www.tenant.net/Court/nolo/nn167.html
The National Association for Community Mediation
http://www.nafcm.org/ 202 667-9700
For details see
Barking Dogs: Legal Ways to Stop the Noise
from Nolo press http://www.nolo.com

--
Diane Blackman
There is no moral victory in proclaiming to abhor violence
while preaching with violent words.
http://dog-play.com/ http://dogplayshops.com/

showdogbark wrote:
snip
Rural areas are problematic to get anything done over noise bylaws. I
had a friend who moved to the country and there were sixteen Rotwilers
that barked 24/7. She could do nothing, and let me tell you she tried.
If you try the boom box thing you will probably **** off your landlord
who will get complained to.
It is one of the sad facts of society that people abandon their dogs
and let them cry and bark for hours neglecting the dogs, and the poor
people who need to live their lives without constant barking. That is
the reason we moved. Non stop barking dogs in a whole town of
delinquent owners. Nelson B.C. is known by tourists to be the most
noisy town for barking as there are two dogs per household for reasons
unknowns to me. The town is over run with delinquent dog owners. So
moving is what my friend with the rotwieler barking problem did also.
Show Dog Bark

It's really tough to get anything done where I live at. I tried to
call up animal control for this county, but we don't even have one. I
don't think there is any excuse for the county not having an animal
control officer, especially when the county has over 10,000+ people
living here. I did call up the number for the city about the nuisance
barking, but they refused to come over, stating that they only service
the city, and not the county.

Tonight, the neighbor's dogs kept barking away past 10pm. This is
apparently due to the fact that the people aren't feeding their dogs
till very late at night. I think this is really wrong. When I get
home, I feed my dogs ASAP. I usually feed them by 7pm, sometimes I'll
try to do it earlier. I'm not sure what the appropriate time is to
feed a dog, but I think waiting to feed them past 10pm -especially when
you could've done it hours earlier - is inexcusable. All they will do
is cry out to be fed all night long and bother others that way. There
really isn't much I can do about the situation with the neighbor. All
I could do was set the boombox next to their fence line and I crank it
up full blast, just so they can see how they like a nuisance. I've
spoken to the neighbors in the past about the dogs, but they make it
clear that they don't care who it bothers.