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AIBU?

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Original poster

To ask whether we are nightmare NB or are they? And what can we do?

60 replies

advicepleaseandpfm · 24/05/2024 11:50

Neighbour is in his early 70s - wife lives with him and they have a grown up son (he is married but wife lives in Asia and has their three children there). We knew they were a bit brusque when we moved in but we always got on with them and rubbed along - we tried to. I do remember one occasion when we had just moved in and someone fell over on the path outside their house and was bleeding, I saw it went out and helped them.
These neighbours sat in their lounge watching me while I called an ambulance - I was actually a bit upset because they are able bodied and have children and grandchildren, but their call if they don't want to help. I thought 'what type of neighbourhood are we in' - during lockdown they broke most of the social distancing rules and had relatives in the house. So I knew then maybe they weren't our cup of tea and in fact one of their grandchildren stayed and he was only 7 and was out in the local park all day and tried to set fire to some of the playground equipment and also wrote in permanent pen on the swing and slides.
Anyway that's the background and he did also say when we moved in 'it's a quiet neighbourhood, we make the noise around here'.
So we got a dog three years ago.
The neighbour started complaining about our dog barking, our dog is vocal but and does bark, but only for a few minutes and she goes to bed when we do. It can be annoying but where we live there are much noisier and more persistent dogs barking! And if she does bark in the night it's because we have foxes that scream in the park near us. I'm woken by them first. We play music to make sure she can't hear in.
Neighbour starts banging on the wall, telling us to shut up our dog. Even when its just a few minutes. On one occasion they set off fireworks in their garden then when our dog barked they banged on the wall. It gets really nasty where he's threatening to kill the dog and us. Swearing in front of our daughter and calling us awful names.

We ended up reporting him to the police. He then reports us to the council for noise nuisance - he sends a diary to the council and the officer calls us to tell us that the noise the dog makes is not unreasonable and because it's not all hours everything is fine. He'd put 2pm barking for a minute on the diary.

These neighbours do play loud music and they do have loud music every afternoon. I don't mind this - but the previous owner of our house was an elderly lady so maybe he's not happy about having a family of five here.

Anyway it gets to the stage where a few weeks we slam a door (actually our teenager slammed it) and we have the neighbour's son screaming at me and my husband out of the back window. I end up writing a letter and posting it through their door - saying we love our neighbours we don't want anything nasty to happen and I also said if we had to move - the neighbour is shouting at us to move - then is no guaranteed it won't be a younger noisier family who might make more noise.

Apparently that was seen a 'threat' and the son threatens to beat up me and my husband! We report to them to the police who are now looking at prosecuting. while this has gone on (for nearly two years) the neighbour has followed me down and up the street and shouted at me behind my back. I'm at least a foot shorter than him and he does it when no-one is around.

He's also done some other weird things I confronted him a few weeks ago he'd been drinking and he admitted that the dogs didn't make that much noise and his wife was ill so she was in pain and that kept him awake most nights. He said his grown up son had to put electrical wires up and needed to go to bed at 8am and get up at 6am. He said he'd been living here 48 years and had bought his house from the council so he should stay and we should move - I pointed out I have a primary and secondary school child.
For the record I start work at 6.30am from home for my job and I also have chatted to neighbours who tell me he's known for shouting 'bitch' out the window at women he doesn't like.
This morning (we are waiting for the police to update us) he tells my husband we are selfish scum and only think of ourselves (he knows both DH do volunteering and he knows what job I do) and that all our neighbours hate us and we need to move. Our dog did bark at 11pm last night - as we were out at a very rare fund raising event. We don't hold parties and now don't any family or friends round as we are scared of making noise. We want to move and rent out our house and live with our family nearby - and then move when my daughters finish school (one will be doing exams next year). How can we resolve this, he wants us to move - but we can't. Should we go round to our neighbours and see what we can do?

OP posts:
TheSnowyOwl · 24/05/2024 12:51

I wouldn’t be impressed by a dog barking in the night or music played to cover it either but I know what you mean about the noises foxes can make so as long as the dog noise is all during the daytime, which you’ve said most of it is, I don’t think you’ve done anything wrong.

Your neighbours sound horrendous and I think letters or conversations with them is likely to inflame the situation. I would just ignore them, keep a record of everything, and keep on logging the threats and harassment with the police.

Assuming you own your property, I think you will need to declare the dispute to sell so moving isn’t necessarily even an option.

Lots of people have dogs and they do have a tendency to make some noise which I think reasonable people accept and don’t mind. What’s not reasonable is for neighbours to be threatening.

Original poster
advicepleaseandpfm · 24/05/2024 12:44

parietal · 24/05/2024 12:36

Don't talk to them ,don't engage, don't let them take up space in your head. Just get on with your life and ignore them. You can't change them, all you can do is grey rock them & record any harassment.

What does grey rock mean?

OP posts:
parietal · 24/05/2024 12:36

Don't talk to them ,don't engage, don't let them take up space in your head. Just get on with your life and ignore them. You can't change them, all you can do is grey rock them & record any harassment.

PrincessofWells · 24/05/2024 12:34

You sound like our neighbours -totally oblivious to their dog barking. We get woken at 6 am, by it, it continues on and off throughout the day. If they go out it doesn't stop until they return.

It's awful.

rainfordays · 24/05/2024 12:34

Your neighbours sound utterly dreadful, and they probably know it and don't care. There is no way they are going to change, so you need to figure out a way to live with it and stop thinking you can in any way 'fix' this (you can't, they don't want to fix it) or you need to move and hope for better neighbours next time.

Cherrysoup · 24/05/2024 12:33

Sorry, OP, but ime of being intimidated and tortured, frankly, by my drug addled neighbour, the only solution is to move, not easy given you've already raised a dispute (quite rightly) with them. They sound like a family of total arseholes. We declared everything to the estate agent and managed to move after some delays, it was a blessed relief to have normal neighbours, but has definitely left us extremely sensitive to noise/minor annoyances.

Original poster
advicepleaseandpfm · 24/05/2024 12:28

KreedKafer · 24/05/2024 12:22

I'll be honest: I love dogs but I wouldn't be impressed if my neighbour's dogs barked during the night, or if they played music as the solution to that.

When you say 'a few minutes' what do you mean, really? Because five solid minutes of barking, multiple times a day, is actually quite a lot and it's very, very grating. You say your dog barked 'because you were out a fundraising event', Does your dog bark for long periods when you go out? Do you actually know what noise it makes when you're not home?

However, your neighbours also sound like absolute horrors. So while I think they're well within their rights to complain about your dog barking, they shouldn't be intimidating you or shouting at you or threatening you. Their grandson sounds appalling and in general, they sound like a bunch of bellends. But at the same time I'd be interested to hear their version of events. (Although obviously there's no excuse for the threats and shouting! As you say - the threats are a police matter and totally unacceptable.

I do remember one occasion when we had just moved in and someone fell over on the path outside their house and was bleeding, I saw it went out and helped them. These neighbours sat in their lounge watching me while I called an ambulance

I'm not really sure what the problem is there. If you'd already gone out and called an ambulance, what was there left for the neighbours to do? If you needed something from them, like a blanket or a bandage or something, I'm sure you could have knocked on the window and asked. If there'd been a four-car pile-up outside your house, then yeah, I'd expect them to come out and help, but it doesn't take three adults to phone an ambulance for someone who's fallen over and cut themselves.

Edited

She doesn't bark during the night - it's quite rare - and I'm a light sleeper - so when they do I'll be the first to wake up. with the ambulance thing - I needed help - she needed to be supported and I also had to leave her to get some dressings from our house. I didn't want to leave her on her own - she was an elderly lady.

OP posts:
KreedKafer · 24/05/2024 12:22

I'll be honest: I love dogs but I wouldn't be impressed if my neighbour's dogs barked during the night, or if they played music as the solution to that.

When you say 'a few minutes' what do you mean, really? Because five solid minutes of barking, multiple times a day, is actually quite a lot and it's very, very grating. You say your dog barked 'because you were out a fundraising event', Does your dog bark for long periods when you go out? Do you actually know what noise it makes when you're not home?

However, your neighbours also sound like absolute horrors. So while I think they're well within their rights to complain about your dog barking, they shouldn't be intimidating you or shouting at you or threatening you. Their grandson sounds appalling and in general, they sound like a bunch of bellends. But at the same time I'd be interested to hear their version of events. (Although obviously there's no excuse for the threats and shouting! As you say - the threats are a police matter and totally unacceptable.

I do remember one occasion when we had just moved in and someone fell over on the path outside their house and was bleeding, I saw it went out and helped them. These neighbours sat in their lounge watching me while I called an ambulance

I'm not really sure what the problem is there. If you'd already gone out and called an ambulance, what was there left for the neighbours to do? If you needed something from them, like a blanket or a bandage or something, I'm sure you could have knocked on the window and asked. If there'd been a four-car pile-up outside your house, then yeah, I'd expect them to come out and help, but it doesn't take three adults to phone an ambulance for someone who's fallen over and cut themselves.

Floralnomad · 24/05/2024 12:21

Talking to them won’t help and with all the complaints the house is likely unsellable . The issue if you rent out your house is that any tenants will likely get the same level of harassment so you will still be dealing with it as a landlord . I’d be very wary of letting the dog in the garden alone in case he throws poisoned meat or something over the fence .

TipsyKoala · 24/05/2024 12:11

He is not going to change and he isn’t going to move either. That’s just the way it is with people like that. He’s lived there 48 years and thinks he owns the right to dictate other people’s lives. I expect your dog is quite annoying which is what has escalated his behaviour but you don’t deserve the abuse and intimidation. Just move, we had to do that, in the end it’s the only solution to deal with awful neighbours, especially when they own their home as it’s so difficult to do anything about them. However if you sell bear in mind you’ll have to declare all the issues and police involvement as you’ve put it on the record.