To put anonymous letter through neighbours door about their dog

I think the faked conversations that happen to bring up the barking problem are next door to passive aggressiveness, and really won't improve things overall. Far better to just go round, knock on the door and be direct. No need to be bolshy or impolite, just a straighforward "I don't like to raise this with you, I'm sure you don't realise the negative impact this is having on us now blah blah". If you engineer a conversation in the ways mentioned by PPs, it'll probably get their backs up when they realise you've deliberately faked a bollocks chat just to say shut your bloody dog up will you...

I'm in the same position myself as a neighbour two doors down seems to put her dog outside for a good old barking session and it's annoying everybody, but none of us wants to be the one to tell neighbour how damn annoying the dog is. Worse, there are two dogs next to her and they set off each other frequently. I don't mind hearing noises from people getting on with their lives but when it's prolonged and unnecessary, it does start getting your back up.

I have a very similar situation, but with eight dogs across three houses. All back onto a field, so whenever another dog is being walked, they all start barking. It gets very loud.
Very bad in the summer when windows are open.

Just mention it to them

I have a guarding breed. In reality guarding breeds are often less barky than toys or terriers are.

An anonymous letter is nasty and could be very upsetting. If somebody ever had an issue with my dog I would much prefer that they speak to me politely about it and we could try to resolve it amicably.

When we got our current dog, I put a note through the doors of our three closest neighbours (each side and the house behind) to tell them we were getting another puppy. I said we'd try to keep her quiet, but if she disturbed them, to please let us know. This was appreciated and, fortunately, she isn't a barker. But yes, much better to approach it gently and kindly than anonymous letters or reporting to the council.

We were the dog owners in a similar situation - though the barking was not as frequent. Our neighbours, who I hadn’t met before, knocked on our door and politely complained. We were mortified that we hadn’t thought of how it would be impacting them, and took steps to stop the barking. We’ve seen them since and it’s not awkward at all.

Although it was awkward at the time, in the end everyone was happy and I think of it as an overall positive interaction with our neighbours. If we had received an anonymous note through the door I would have felt accused, guilty and paranoid.

Please just speak with them!

A quiet word in passing at whatever time she goes out to walk it and you just happen to be coming out too?

“Oh hi liz how’s wee rover, good boy, hes lovely isn’t he. Although His barking is awfully loud at 6am when half the street is trying to sleep though (tinkly laugh) I wonder if you could supervise him a bit more when he goes out for his morning pee to keep him quiet please. Whose a lovely boy good dog” type thing.

@Theextraordinaryisintheordinary
No! Absolutely do not put chews through or ever give chews, food or toys to any dog without the owners consent! Dogs should never be left unsupervised with chews, they can and do choke on them. Dogs can also have allergies to ingredients just as we can.

This.

Knock on the door and have a chat, or report to the council. Typing out little anonymous notes to post secretly isn’t particularly helpful to anyone and involves the whole street unnecessarily.

If you can't face raising it sensibly, then just leave it altogether.

Anonymous letters are no help and just make everyone uncomfortable.

your husband works same location as the neighbour? Anonymous typed letter posted by mail letter
This has the potential to cause ill feelings if they see you post it through door

Let me know if you come up with any good wording and I’ll use it too for the same situation although ours starts at 6am - they just leave them in the garden barking continuously all day I don’t get it. Massive loud hounds no way they can’t hear it. Drives me potty

I think it won’t get you anywhere, and the council in my area only investigate if it’s barking incessantly.
The biggest problem with raising a concern like this with a neighbour is they are likely to then list everything that you do that annoys them and it can turn into a neighbour war.

Letter,yes but send by post. Otherwise they'll see you on ring doorbell
All this go have a nice chat is a bit twee, assumes they'll reflect and immediately address the issue with no ill feeling. You want them to do something yiu dint want ongoing agg arising from a letter. Tough if they have hurt feelings or feel got at, they need to be better neighbours.

Anonymous letter, yes, but posted

It doesn’t have to be an aggressive show down eastenders style. Just be calm and pleasant with a “let’s sort this out together” approach.

Put some chews through the door with a polite note asking them to stick one in its gob before it goes out for a wee. I have to do this to make sure my neighbours aren’t woken up by one of my rat bags. It works a treat.

Otherwise you could start a conversation about something else, move on to asking how old the dog is now and ask curious questions like how she is in general. Compliment the neighbour on how much you like the dog and then drop it in that she’s your alarm clock. Joke about her becoming the local cockerel! Ask if they have thought about giving her a treat as she leaves the door for her early morning wee because your friend finds that works really well and stops the barking.

Please talk to them. Be nice but firm and explain how much it bothers you. It's not easy to train a barky dog not to bark, but there are some very easy fixes they could make. Eg. Let it out later or on a lead. Put blinds on windows and doors so it can't see outside. You could suggest the obvious ones.

I think you are more likely to get them to engage in quieting the dog if you identify yourself and speak to them in person.

By (a) doing it in writing and (b) being anonymous it becomes more abstract and less likely for them to see it from your point of view. The experience is more like some random just telling them off without them having any right to reply, which can piss people off without really influencing them to change their behaviour. You know in arguments it's better to frame it as "I feel" rather than "you always..." - sort of equivalent to that.

Logically you must know that what happened with your mum's report was a freak accident and not the norm. It'll be human error and unlikely to be repeated.

Somebody reported me to the council for something that wasn’t true, they presumably wanted to cause trouble. I don’t know who it was, or why. It’s been very upsetting. Have the guts to speak to your neighbours in person, and see if a solution can be found. They may not be aware of how bad things are from your perspective given they are used to the noise.

My council won't investigate until you have personally tried to resolve yourself.

Go and knock on the door and say you are feeling agitated every time to dog barks as it's happening really frequently and could they please help.

I’ve had a similar letter and it was very upsetting. If the person had talked to me I could have told them about all of the training and meditation we were using and how we were working to stop the situation. Instead they put an anonymous letter through the door that gave no way to respond and felt really cowardly.

If you can’t talk to them then maybe write a signed note that allows you to raise the issue, avoid the first conversation about it but opens the door for a follow-up conversation if you or your neighbours want to discuss it further.

Talk to them, or if you can't face that, at least sign the note so they know who it;s from.

If it's a guarding breed, it may not be possible for them to train the dog to be completely quiet under all the circumstances you mention. If someone comes to the door, my GSD will bark for a couple of minutes. We've managed to train her out of barking in the garden and not to look out of windows and get triggered by everything outside that moves. I'm sure it pisses off one of my neighbours who expects everyone to live in complete silence, but if you live in a residential area, you do need to accept there will be some level of noise with kids playing and dogs barking etc.

Personally I would speak to them and see whether they can work on minimising the number situations in which the dog barks. I think if you report to the council, it may count as a neighbour dispute that you need to declare if you sell your house in the future.

This worked (completely accidentally) in my case
I bumped into the dog owner socially in a neutral place, I just asked “not sure, but is it your dog that wakes me at x time in the mornings and at x time at night”? (said in a pleasant neutral manner).
The owner said no it wasn’t her dog - but the noise stopped permanently as of the next day.

I think the owner appreciated being made aware of the nuisance directly, rather than the council becoming involved.