To put anonymous letter through neighbours door about their dog

[Whatisgoingonheredear]

A neighbour has a little dog that barks all day, for ages.
Starts at about 6am. Runs outside, barks for about 5 minutes solid.
Will happen throughout the day, including if anyone walks past, pulls up, if anyone has a delivery, if anyone goes to their car or bin. Usually does it's last round of barking at about 10 - 10.30pm. Barks when leaving for walks and when arriving back from walks.

It's been grinding on me for a while but is now seriously pissing me off. I'm not sure if they're blind to it. It isn't one or two barks and will go on for minutes at a time. When they first got this dog they'd occasionally say "no" or "stop" (which obviously didn't work) but I am not sure if they have made any other attempts to do anything about this.

I am dreadful with any sort of confrontation and would prefer to put an anonymous note through the door, saying I am not sure if they realise the frequency of the barking and is there anything they could do to please reduce this.

I also really feel for the dog as it must be constantly on edge.

WIBU to do this? I don't want to report to the council.

People who send anonymous notes are cunts.

We had a similar issue with a dog breeder who lived next door. She and her many dogs were seemingly nocturnal and the barking went on all night and you could hear her shouting at them to shut up. We kept a log for 2 weeks noting the dates times and length of barking episodes which we sent to environmental health. I presumed that it would be dealt with anonymously however they told her it was us who complained and she came round to our house shouting at us.
Beware that the council may pass on your details.

Just go and talk to them, like an adult. Don't send a shitty note and not even have the balls to sign it.

We had this, they let the dog out and ut was barking to get back in. I went and knocked on the door and asked her to stop her dog barking incessantly at that time of day. Nothing changed. My husband went around and spoke with her (her father was there too). He explained that a lot of the neighbours were unhappy with the situation and it would be taken further formally, if it didn't stop. It improved a lot after that. We moved 6 months later.

You are entitled to your opinion, but mine is that people who make such generalised statements and use language like this, show themselves up to be very bigoted, with a very limited vocabulary.

Thankyou for your irrelevant input. Would you like to opine on anything else unrelated? Perhaps your best recipe for rough puff pastry? Or the Gold Standard?

Meanwhile, back in the thread, people who send anonymous notes are fucking cunts.

I totally agree. Do a bit of research and perhaps source some details of dog trainers who can help with this. Lie to them and say you had a friend with a dog who had similar issues and this helped them loads. Offering them a way to solve the problem makes it look like you're trying to be constructive and doing it in a positive way.

Dogs bark. I take it your children are deadly silence and don’t make a noise that disturbs your neighbours? Unless the dog is being mistreated why would you report an innocent animal and risk it being taken from its family to be locked in a cage scared and sad?

I received one of those anonymous notes in the past - it wasn't even my dog barking - the neighbours on our other side had got a new dog. It was horrible not being able to go to someone and explain that because I wasn't going to go to the neighbours about it so it just looked like I was doing nothing. My dog was trained not to bark in the house or in the yard and was very rarely in the house alone.

So I think you need to put your big mumsnetter pants on and either put in a formal complaint to the council or you go to them directly and do it really nicely. As pps have said barking related issues can take a while to resolve so leaving them no option to come back to you with a response means they can't tell you they've been working on it or look at other resolutions with you etc.

I did a note posted by Royal Mail - it worked.

The owner complained EVERY year about fireworks. He was very aggressive during lockdowns about people being out etc (all on Facebook) so I never felt I could talk to him.

I just asked that he bring his little dogs in at night rather than leaving them out barking (yapping) for ages.

the note was polite and it worked.

I don’t care that he’ll never know who wrote it. I wish I’d done it sooner tbh.

Yes it’s a legitimate way to raise an issue if there is potential the recipient will be unreasonable
Glad it worked out

I said YABU because you should just knock on the door and speak to them like an adult.

I did this with my next door neighbour - they hadn’t realised they’re dog was getting out of the dog flap and barking at 1am every night until I told them!

The RSPCA are useless at this type of thing so not much of a threat. Try talking to the neighbours about it or contact the council.

People ignore anonymous letters the same way they they ignore ad leaflets. I know I have.
You are going to have to speak with them if you want to be taken seriously.

My neighbour worked up the courage to confront me in the street about my dog howling, only it wasn't my dog, it was our joint neighbours dog.
She had worked herself up to such an extent that once she started she was going to see it through whatever.
We were stood at her garden gate and she said listen how loud it is you can hear it out here. Make her stop.
So I looked down at my girl who was stood silently at my side and said Bells be quiet.
Neighbour looked at me, looked at the dog yelled oh my god and ran back inside.
She came around with a bottle of wine later to apologise.

So yes, I get how anxiety inducing it can be. But it's better face to face. Had she not spoken to me, she would have gone on thinking it was my dog, and I'd have been pissed off I couldn't explain to whoever sent the note

Please don't - whilst marketed as 'pet friendly' they're fucking not, they produce a sound that is too high a pitch for us to hear, but that is really painful for a dog to experience (ditto, cats, and any other animal around).

They can market them as 'pet friendly' and 'harmless' because those terms mean nothing really, but they only work because they are extremely aversive.

Fixing barking via use of aversives will create other behavioural issues, and does not address the underlying cause of the problem, which in itself is also going to create further behavioural issues.

Oh...Im shocked...I didn't know that...thank you ...I will do some more research...I'd hate to hurt any animal...thank you so much.

I agree with your approach. Far too many people on here leap straight to reporting to the authorities without actually giving them a chance to sort it out first and if you’re not keen on confrontation, this is a good middle ground.

I’m useless with confrontation too but think I’d take a deep breath and knock on their door and open the convo by saying I am finding this incredibly stressful and I may cry, but I really need to chat with you. Have you got 5 minutes?

The OP has said that her neighbours are nice people. For this reason, it should surely be possible for her to speak to them about the barking face to face rather than post them an anonymous note?