To accuse neighbours of trying to hurt my dogs?

[TigerJoy]

Got home last night at about 10pm to find my 2 dogs very overexcited for some reason. Then this morning I went outside to find a number of rocks on our patio, along with a bit of a children's toy and a piece of wood.

I suspect our neighbours were throwing them at our dogs, who were outside in the garden all afternoon / evening. For a bit of context, we live in a row of 1930s semis / terrace houses all with identical reasonable-sized long narrow gardens. The dogs have kennels outside and are usually out all day and while one of the dogs is a bit excitable and barks at people at the door they don't bark very much - just at birds and pigeons occasionally. Our other neighbours have said they never hear them.

The neighbours I suspect of throwing things can often be heard in the afternoon getting drunk and smoking weed (I think they're marginally employed), often with friends and playing music, so it's not like they never make any noise either.

I don't know them well but in general we get along so I don't want to go in all guns blazing but if they've been throwing things at my dogs I want to address it up front and stop it. Incidentally, one of the dogs was sick this morning (very unusual for her) so I don't know if they might have thrown something over she ate as well.

Has anyone got any advice on how I tackle this with them?

Any chance you could install a security camera?ask other neighbours?pretend to be out and watch what's going on?
Obviously you need hard proof of what's going on,but you need to sort this asap.
I would be really concerned about your dog being sick,you don't know what they are throwing over.
Sorry can't be more helpful and I hope you get to the bottom of it soon.

Not excusing them throwing things for a minute, but you obviously cannot know how much your dogs were barking yesterday if you weren't there. I can't say I'd be terribly happy if my neighbours left their dogs out in the garden unattended all day.

Yes, especially not until ten pm.

Why are your dogs outside all the time?

I've never understood why people get dogs and then lock them outside for hours. Isn't the whole point of a pet dog companionship?

As someone who has to put up with our neighbour's dogs barking on and off all day I can't tell you how annoying it is!!! It literally drives me to tears sometimes.However I would never throw rocks at them!!

Could you go and ask them in a non accusatory way? It sounds like your dogs were maybe barking a lot and they'd had enough! Not good though.

It's certainly not right for anyone to terrorise your dogs, but....do they live outside all the time, and how long are they left alone for? The fact that your other neighbours say they never hear them doesn't mean a lot really, as perhaps they are indoors more (or just being polite). They could be barking a lot, and as late as 10 pm that would annoy me, especially as no owner is around to tell them to shut up. Also it could have been an unsupervised child throwing things at your dogs (you mentioned a toy), and your neighbours aren't aware of what happened.
I think you need to find out what your dogs are doing when you are not there, probably with a camera. Then you will know how they are behaving when unsupervised.
Just as an aside, I would be very concerned about dogs being stolen from a garden when no owner is around, or somebody letting them out for a laugh.

Whether your dogs have annoyed them or not is irrelevant, it takes a complete prick to throw things at dogs. I would be very concerned for your dogs safety as they may get hurt / poisoned.
You should really have an outside camera anyway , so that for your peace of mind you can check if your dogs appear happy on their own that length of time. It’s very hot at the moment how are you ensuring enough cold fresh water? Tbh that is a long time to leave a dog alone outside.

If there is a problem with the dogs barking, then the neighbours should address op and not throw things over fence at the dogs.If anything this would antagonize the dogs more!

What Frequency said.

Oh the neighbours are in the wrong too. Animal abuse is abhorrent and throwing rocks, if they were doing it to hurt them and not in a drunken/stoned attempt to entertain the bored animals is much worse abuse than leaving dogs unattended outside for all hours. But leaving dogs unsupervised outside for all hours isn't great either, is it?

Neither OP nor her neighbours come out of this smelling of roses. I would think allowing the dogs access to the house when she's out will solve the problem without any conflict though.

As someone who has neighbors with dogs that “don’t bark” I can totally understand we have some neighbours like that and they do my fucking head in soon as they leave dog does not stop whining and barking till they get back. Have reported to the council, rspca etc. they just don’t get it. So though I wouldn’t throw rocks I can certainly agee with the centimet

You found a piece of a childs toy? My son adores dogs, and our neighbour when he was small had two beautiful labradors who were often loose in their garden. My son was desperate for their attention and kept throwing random things over the fence like his hat, a handful of pebbles etc.

We told him the dogs will get very very sick if they ate anything he threw and never left him alone until he stopped it. (Dogs owners had a word, this had more impact). Is it possible they have kids who are trying to get dogs attention ? (Positively or not?)

I would install cctv, pretend to be out and see what happens with the neighbours, you will also seen his the dogs behave when you're out. and like pp said I would take dogs to the vet if they continue to be sick.

You definitely need a camera up. For your dogs sake and to make sure they really aren’t being a nuisance. Are you not worried about them being stolen?

This is the first time it's happened, and the dogs have been here 2 years. Yes I will get a camera.

The dogs were only outside from 4pm and I did check with my other neighbours first: they said they didn't hear them barking yesterday.

I don't really understand the criticism for leaving the dogs outside. We will leave them out in the evening if we're out and the weather's good. It's much nicer for them and they have a place to sleep, we always make sure they have fresh water. They'll be outside if we're both at work as well: they have secure, dry kennels so we know they're comfortable. I don't really understand why people think dogs being alone for 6 hours is a problem. It's completely normal to leave dogs alone while you go to work, as long as they've been walked and fed. What do you think most dog owners do?

I'm pretty sure the other neighbours are not just being polite - we are good friends and I asked them when the dogs first came to let us know if the dogs bark a lot when we're out as it's something we'd do something about. Dogs bark a lot when they're unattended if they're unhappy, or under-exercised, or stressed and so if this was happening I would address it for their sake as well my neighbours.

We don't lock them in the garden the whole time and ignore them: as I speak I am working at home with a dog at my feet. They're foreign dogs who were brought up to live outside all the time (they slept outside in kennels too). We bought this house to give them a home (we adopted them after my DP's mum died - they were her dogs) - we have a completely secure garden, with a locked gate so they can't be stolen. They sleep in the house at night (in fact when my DP is on nights one of them sleeps on the bed with me).

Generally in the summer we'll leave the backdoor open and they'll go in and out, but they tend to be wherever we are when we're at home. I work 9-5 and my DP works shifts (including night shifts). They're much loved dogs who spend a lot of time with us and are walked regularly, always have access to clean water. We have a dog walker who takes them out if we can't manage it, usually in the middle of day, so they're not left unattended for long stretches.

I really don't think they bark much but even if they did trying to hurt them is not on.

I wonder if it is the child - I might address it with the neighbours in that way, it'll be less aggressive.

This is a really good point, thank you, I hadn't thought of that!

Sadly some people are just twats. Next door (B&B) a guest smoked out the window and hurled lit butt's into our garden. We have ddogs.
Went round and told the owners.
Instead twat guest aggravated them through the window then complained they barked all the time!
Owners didn't have them back to stay.

Please let us know how you get on.
Are there kids with access to the garden?
If so,you said the adults are in the garden through the day,they must have seen them throwing things over fence!!
Again,please be wary of what's being thrown over.
Hope everything works out ok 😂

I'd talk to the neighbour before you accuse them. Could a child have thrown things over the fence trying to entertain the dogs?

I'd put CCTV up if it happens again. They might be barking more than you think. It's really really annoying if your peace is regularly disturbed by barking dogs. Our old neighbours left their dogs in the garden while they were at work, they used to bark and howl on and off all day. The neighbour on the other side took to spraying them with the hose and shouting 'shut up' over the wall! We only found out about the hose because they thought it was us!

I don't think it's really fair to leave dogs out all day with no supervision. What if one got ill or injured and had to wait 6 hours for you to come home? Or they had a fight? Or something upset them and they barked for hours?

I find it weird that the dogs have been here for 2 years with no-one saying anything. I have repeatedly asked both sets of neighbours - including these ones - if the dogs are barking during the day or disturbing them and they've always said no.

The neighbours aren't answering to my knocking on the door but I'll keep trying.

I didn't ask anyone whether it was ok to leave the dogs alone, by the way.

Pleased us know how you get on.
Think you need to pretend you are out for the day to see what's going on.
Otherwise you will be fretting every time you leave dogs alone.

Thanks very much for everyone's advice on this - there's a happy ending.

Next door didn't answer the door for ages until tonight, when we were eating dinner in the garden and the dogs started barking. Couldn't work out why til I saw water coming through a knot hole in the fence. Shouted "hey stop that" then walked over - looked through and saw the little girl looking scared, and asked her nicely to stop, as she was scaring the dogs.

I went next door with some of the things thrown over and spoke to the mum who was horrified but not surprised - apparently she's got a new friend who is encouraging her to be naughty. Little girl got upset and said sorry - I explained this kind of thing scared the dogs but if she wanted to spend some time with them she could come over and say hi to the dogs, or she could come on a walk with us (plus a member of her family). It was a great talk with her mum - we both agreed it's not her usual behaviour. She's generally a sweet kid and I don't think she understood the impact of what she was doing.

Thanks everyone for the advice - this all worked out really well.