To let my dog bark for an extra half hour even though the neighbour was already annoyed

[Candlestand]

I have 2 dogs, DH usually takes them to work so Mon-Fri they're never here during the day. Due to a bit of excess faffing yesterday morning he forgot them. Normally he puts them in the dog box in the car and sorts out DD and they all head off to nursery then work but somehow yesterday he just forgot he hadn't already put them in the car and I got a text from DH to tell me the dogs were still in the garden. Fine. I'm up in my office, WFH, the back door is open as it was such a nice day, they can mooch in and out as they please and we'll just walk them tonight instead.
I work for the local authority and we've had a nasty incident occur with a safeguarding issue for a child and I was part of back to back meetings so I never even went down for a cup of tea. I'm then in a meeting that I have been volunteered as minute taker for and there are over 20 people in this meeting and that's when my neighbour starts banging on my door. Initially I ignore him thinking it's a delivery and I can't leave this meeting but he is now practically pounding my door down so I race to the other room to open the window to ask them to go away whatever it is and he starts swearing that the dogs are barking and its really annoying. I shout down that I'm sorry but I'm in a meeting and I will sort them out as soon as I'm out of it. I can see he's furious and he storms off still swearing but the meeting is still going on without me and I have to be in it. I'm now vaguely aware that my younger dog is barking because it's been brought to my attention but honestly I just hadn't noticed before because it had been such a busy morning so I don't know how long they had been barking for. I didn't want to disrupt the meeting by asking for a break because there was a lot going on in it and we were, I hoped, almost finished but it turned out we were still going half an hour later before the meeting actually finished and because I'm now aware of it I can hear the dog still barking on and off for that time.
The thing is, we have a big garden and they don't come in when called straight away because it becomes a game to them so although me being out in the garden with them stopped the barking it takes me over 5 minutes to get them to come into the house (which I knew it would and why I didn't want to stop in the middle of a very large meeting to chase around my garden for ages). I appreciate it must have been annoying and I could see my neighbours over our fence so when I could go get them I apologised properly and tried to explain that I couldn't leave the meeting to come and get them and they were furious with me and said I was ruining their day. They are retired and are always in their garden. My dog was actually barking at their dog who was sat with them and my little dog could smell him, the older one wasn't actually barking. I tried to explain that he was just excited by their dog and if they had taken their dog in, he would have stopped barking but this just made them angrier (I meant it to try and break the tension as a discussion rather than a criticism of them, though clearly I misjudged how to say that) as they said why shouldn't their dog be allowed outside when he's being well behaved. I apologised again and just got back to chasing the dogs into the house and went back to work.

I appreciate it was annoying but I'm not sure they needed to be quite so angry. It was the middle of the day, this never normally happens at all because the dogs are not here during the week and at the weekend we're both able to be much more atuned to them if one of them starts barking at another dog or a squirrel or something and it has never been an issue before. We live rurally so other than the house on the other side of our neighbours theres no one else to be upset by the barking.
WIBU to put work before my neighbours enjoyment of their garden for half an hour?

[NiceTwin]

I went on holiday, a house sitter looked after the dogs. They barked. A lot!
Somebody complained to the council.

Only had 3 neighbours, bought them a bunch of flowers each, went round and apologised profusely. Never happened again and neighbourly relations were still good.

Now the dust has settled, go round and be contrite, your attitude appears to have made the situation worse.

[DinosaurDiana]

Kids are allowed to scream all day and look over your fence while bouncing on their trampoline, neighbours are allowed to play loud music, allow weed smoke to billow over your fence, Rev their motorbike engines etc. But your dog must not bark.

[eurochick]

YABU. Barking for "an extra half hour" must have been driving them crazy. It's really not fair. If they are not usually banging on your door every time the dog whimpers you can bet they had tolerated it for ages before coming round when they were at their limit. You should have just excused yourself for a couple of minutes to get the dog in.

[BritWifeinUSA]

None of this would have happened if your husband hadn’t left the dogs behind. How could he forget two dogs?

[MyOtherProfile]

I am sometimes involved in cp meetings. It's horrible and important but not life and death at that precise moment. I think in your long op you have stressed that so people can see how busy you were and how important your work was.

Except the incidents with the child had tragically already happened so you weren't at the point of saving them. You could have said I'm sorry but please can we take a 5 minute comfort break at this point, sorted the dogs out and come back to the meeting.

Probably a number of other people would have been grateful for the break too.

[MrsKingfisher]

But you managed to leave the meeting to tell your neighbour to go away, so really it's not a great excuse.

[harknesswitch]

Shit happens, it's a one off and you didn't realise that they dogs were barking, plus you were in a meeting you couldn't leave. If it happened every day then I'd say you were bu. Sometimes things happen and it wasn't down on purpose.

Maybe pop some flowers round to the neighbours over the weekend for the sake of ndn relations.

Just make sure next time your dh forgets the dogs, that they go inside when you're in a meeting.

I have 3 dogs and when I know I'm going to be on the phone for a long period of time I put them in the house (my office is at the bottom of the garden), it just makes it easier as I know they won't disturb me or the neighbours, plus I know where they are.

[AbsolutelyPatsy]

yanbu, imo

[Ponoka7]

"He's only just over a year old and has found his voice since we moved here from a much smaller garden because there's lots of exciting things to bark at "

He's an adult dog and he's barking because you haven't taught him not to. Your DH taking them to work isn't solving the problem. You need to teach dogs how to behave when you aren't there. Have you picked yappy breeds?

[Creepygnochi]

@DinosaurDiana

Kids are allowed to scream all day and look over your fence while bouncing on their trampoline, neighbours are allowed to play loud music, allow weed smoke to billow over your fence, Rev their motorbike engines etc. But your dog must not bark.

People don't tolerate those things either. I think you'll find selfish, irresponsible parents who can't control their children are one of the leading causes of society's rapidly increasing intolerance for children as a whole, and why more and more things are becoming child free to accommodate that.

[Ponoka7]

It isn't just the barking, you need to work on them coming when called. Stop being so overindulgent, this should have been started at 12 weeks and sorted by eight months. At what age do you think dogs become trainable and adults?

[Macncheeseballs]

Not sure why the details about the meetings were relevant

[BorisandHarriet]

I completely understand how the situation happened. It’s not like you planned to be upstairs working while the dog roamed in and out. BUT you needed to be properly apologetic once you realised the situation.

[RaeRaeMama]

I think they're incredibly rude to be honest. You're very considerate to take the time to speak to them and explain OP. I'm surprised so many of the previous commenters haven't said as much.

Perhaps if it was a regular ongoing problem I could understand their annoyance but it's a one off and they really overreacted.

I live rurally as well and have a neighbour with an occasionally noisy Jack Russell... but I would never dream of doing what they've done

[Ohpulltheotherone]

OP you’re being unreasonable because you’ve come on here hoping that people will agree and say
“No it’s not that bad” and that your neighbour is in the wrong. However, hardly anyone thinks that but you don’t want to accept it. If you aren’t willing to accept that you are in the wrong and people may not agree with you then you shouldn’t post, sorry.

It’s unfortunate and of course you haven’t done it on purpose but the fact is you handled it badly. Your neighbour was within his right to be angry, it wasn’t 10 minutes of noise it was hours worth on and off.

Here’s what you should have done: stopped the meeting as soon as you became aware of it by saying “I am incredibly sorry but I have an urgent situation which I have to deal with, please can we pause for 5 minutes” OR you Skype / chat msg someone else in the meeting and ask them to cover the minute taking as you have a situation.

I know you didn’t want to stop the meeting or left but you should have. It is work, it is NOT so important that you can never pause a meeting. So you need to firstly work on your ability to make decisions and take charge of situations and secondly work on training your dogs because no matter how you keep trying to talk it down or persuade us otherwise, your dog sounds annoying.

It sounds like it was very stressful and you’ve not done it on purpose but you are at fault here, not your neighbour.

[BusyLizzie61]

[quote Candlestand]@Sirzy That's unfair. It wasn't at all that I couldn't be bothered, I could not leave that meeting. It's not a choice to work, I have to work and its not my choice to work from home.[/quote]
No, you chose not to even request to quickly leave.

I have many safeguarding occurrences in my work, yet would never do this.

You chose to have a dog and have a responsibility for not allowing your choices to negatively impact on others.

[MiddleParking]

[quote Candlestand]@MiddleParking he has a pick up truck, the dogs go in a box on the back of the truck. He's never forgotten them before, I don't entirely understand how he did it, he just did. He thought he'd already put them in by the time he was getting DD in the car but he can't see them in the box when he's in the car with DD.[/quote]
Well then he’s a clown and he needs to apologise to both you and the neighbours. And it wouldn’t surprise me if your angry neighbour is suddenly a bit less angry when it’s a man in front of him.

[makingmammaries]

I was with you until you got to the part about the dogs not coming in the house when called, which isn’t rocket science to teach, so I wonder about the rest of their training. Also, as PP have asked, how secure is your garden? As a dog owner, I am sick of getting the finger pointed at me for my neighbour’s constantly escaping dogs, which recently killed another neighbour’s cat. Seriously, you need to know where your dogs are and what they are doing, and be able to call them.

[RancidOldHag]

Noise nuisance is just not on.

As you say from the thread title, you could have ended this earlier.

That is what you should ave fine.

Work is important, but when circumstances have conspired against you and something needs urgent attention, then you give it that attention.

And the dogs need closer attention. You can't just ignore them and their nuisance they are causing.

So as they are not well enough behaved to be outdoors unsupervised, keep them indoors if this happens again, or get your computer set up so you can move it to the garden, where loads of people work when the weather is nice.

And you also know now that you need to reinforce thrashing, so they can be recalled from the garden.

And go and make a proper apology to the neighbours for your utterly graceless conduct. Even when stressed, you really should not treat other people like that

[AllThatFancyPaintsAsFair]

@Creepygnochi

I don't think you need to go around with a bottle of wine/flowers/chocolate/whatever other bullshit mn likes to sprout. It's over and done with. Just reflect on what you can do to handle it more efficiently in the future.

And for the love of God, get your dogs trained. I know it's hard if he's only a baby because doggy preschools have been cancelled this year, but they're reopening now. Make that a priority.

I agree, taking round gifts is always suggested on neighbour threads but does anyone in real life do that? Seems odd to me, you've apologised so move on and be more considerate next time.
Also a bit funny that your DH forgot to take them if it's something that he does every day but that might be me as I can't stand a man that faffs about.

[Scrumptiousbears]

OP. I think you are getting a hard time here. Clearly no one having a dig at you has ever worked from home in a situation where you cannot just leave your work to deal with, quite frankly minor one off issue with a neighbour.

These are the people who will also be criticising the "local authority" for not dealing with the safeguarding issue properly and in a timely manner.

[mayblossominapril]

It was a one off, so long as it remains that I wouldn’t stress. Some noise is happens when you live so close together.
Just don’t let it happen again.

[Panicmode1]

If it is a one off, then apologise to your neighbours. But a barking dog IS a nuisance to other people..we live in town and the people behind us allow their dog to yap incessantly along our/their back fence. It sets my dog off, and every single time I go and stop her and bring her in. They hear me but don't do anything, ever, and it ruins my enjoyment of my (small) garden. Dog ownership comes with responsibilities, which include training and playing with your dogs so they behave and don't irritate other people.....!

[Macncheeseballs]

Perhaps your choice to own dogs is negatively impacting your ability to do the job

[Tirathisyou]

@DinosaurDiana

Kids are allowed to scream all day and look over your fence while bouncing on their trampoline, neighbours are allowed to play loud music, allow weed smoke to billow over your fence, Rev their motorbike engines etc. But your dog must not bark.

No one has said that.