I’ve not posted about this before but have seen similar - I’ll try to be as honest as possible and not leave anything out.
I have two dogs. New Dog (ND) we got at the start of lockdown as a middle aged rescue dog (we agreed to adopt in Jan but admin took time). Original Dog (OD - younger) was always well behaved, goes out to the loo, only barks at the door bell.
ND is more reactive, I’m going to list a comprehensive list of times each barks:
- someone coming to the door. ND is very good at hearing, she will hear and watch the door WAY before someone even comes to the front gate. She’s never been wrong - great guard dog. Total barking is around 10 seconds, I always stop ND as her voice is yappy
- animals in our garden, ie a cat, fox etc. If they see one they’ll bark until it goes or until I pick them up. This happens maybe every month or two as the animals avoid showing themselves due to dogs
- when a fox goes down the side of our garden (not visible) / bats in neighbours trees. This is only ever ND, OD doesn’t pick up the scent as well. We learned of ND’s reactivity quickly and now know what time the foxes come and go out in the garden with her, she may bark once or twice a week for less than 5 seconds if I don’t get my shoes on quick enough.
I personally don’t think this amount of barking is unreasonable or unheard of. We live in one of the most dog friendly towns in UK. More people have dogs in this area than not, every shop allows them in and the mini Tesco has a little dog house to tie them up in for people popping in. Dogs bark on the street regularly, I don’t notice it as it’s normal and like the birds making noise, we also live on a flight path so you tune the noise out.
Next door is two flats. One neighbour is an elderly man. His behaviour has become odd and provocative. He has an alarm he puts on when he thinks the dogs will go out, like a normal human wake up alarm, the dogs don’t register it but I realised he does it every time I go out in the garden (even without the dogs). He’s also started banging on my walls, when we are in complete silence... we were away the whole of August and had the dog camera on to monitor potential break ins etc. It has a noise detector when it notifies your phone, it went off now and then so I looked in to him banging on the walls (dogs were obviously not there). I asked the other flats what it was - they said it was dogs in the street barking but he just bangs on my walls.
He’s sensitive to all noise - for example, in the summer DH and I went into our garden for a glass of wine in the evening. We had no music playing, only general chit chat and was in normal social hours. We left the dogs inside as it’s when the foxes come out and didn’t want to have to focus on them. Neighbour came out and I started hearing a brushing against the fence, mimicking the noise the foxes make but was obviously not them. DH stood up and looked over the fence to the neighbour making the noise and then shouting at us for being loud. We said it’s early evening in the summer, we are just talking in our garden and have every right to that. I realised he was trying to make the dogs react to get them to bark, so that he could say something. He does this a lot.
He also has these issues with his flat neighbours, if they walk too loudly for his liking etc he complains and he also gave them a curfew of when they can be out of bed (not joking...) he’s banned them from going to the toilet at night time as it wakes him up. He’s not their landlord and doesn’t own any of the properties.
He’s known as difficult on the street. I’ve always been pleasant but I’ve had enough. I’m scared to go into my garden and feel like he’s always watching me. He’s threatened me before and has been racist towards me.
I don’t know what to do! I can report it to the police but that wouldn’t do much and would cause issues when we come to sell if he’s still alive.
Sorry it’s so long!