Next door neighbours dog

[EnglishRose1320]

Next door have a large dog that has an equally large and loud bark. It is constantly waking me up in the early hours of the morning with its barking.

Oh popped round once when it was particularly bad and earlier than usual- an hour plus at 1 in the morning and they did get it to settle down then but it's getting worse again, more often and for longer. Anytime from 4-7 in the morning mostly.

What's the best way to discuss this with them, I don't want to fall out but I would like to get up in the morning not feeling totally exhausted still. Last time they did stop the dog barking that one night but they weren't easy to talk to. I don't want to post a letter or complain about them, I think the decent thing is to talk first but what should I say? What should I expect? How often should a dog bark?

Dogs shouldn’t be keeping neighbours awake. They should be trained to bark at intruders or the doorbell etc to be helpful to their owners but not every time a fox strolls down the road or a cat sits on a wall three doors down at 3am!

The council environmental noise team can look into this. They come out with noise meters, in my case within the hour!

Your choice is whether to speak to the neighbours again first or go straight to the council.
The council won’t tell them who complained but they’ll put two and two together if you spoke to them the day before and today the councils at their door. Unless of course you slip in a reference to others eg a ‘some of the neighbours and I have noticed the dog barking at night. It’s keeping people awake. You did a great job of stopping the problem last time we spoke. Could you sort it again please. Thanks’

That way it’s not just you they’ll hate lol.

Unfortunately from the layout of our street it will be really obvious that it was us that complained which is one of the reasons I think it's best to approach them and have a chat. Oh doesn't want to, doesn't want any potential ill feeling between us afterwards.

Originally I was just going to keep quiet because we were hoping to move soon but Corona has put those plans on the back burner and it also means we are always in so the barking is even more annoying.