I really need some advice as I can’t face another summer like this
I have a terrier rescue dog. He is a happy and lovely, cheeky little sod who can be a reactive barker - he is triggered mostly by very sudden loud noises. I have managed to get him to listen to me 80% of the time to stop barking after one bark by holding up my hand and saying STOP to him. he will let out one surprise bark at the post coming though the letter box, if you dropped something on the floor and it clattered he would let out a surprise bark. He will bark at cats sometimes if they sit on the fence and I always always call him away from doing it into the house. I have a camera with a noise detector in the house and he only barks if we are home
He is very scared of fireworks and thunder. These would make him upset and he doesn’t listen to me saying stop and he would bark a lot and be visibly upset. I would cuddle him/drown out noise/distract when this happens
I live on a row of houses lined by trees (kind of has an echo tunnel effect and one of the neighbours children has some kind of BB gun/air rifle and spends HOURS and I mean hours, pinging and snapping this thing in their garden shooting cans and bottles. It’s been going from 5-9.30pm this evening and it was the same all last summer as he was off school this sometimes was all day long too, whilst I was trying to work from home
This drives my dog absolutely crazy, he runs around in circles and barks incessantly and we have to spend the whole time indoors with all the windows and doors closed with the radio on, boiling to death exactly at the nice cooler time of evening. I can’t let him outside at all during this time. None of us can sit outside. Sometimes even despite all these measures he still keeps jumping and getting upset
I’ve tried reporting this to the council - they aren’t interested really. I think that it borders on antisocial. And I flagged to them my dog noise in case of a complaint about him. They said they would keep this on file. The man who lives there is intimidating and had aggressive run ins with other neighbours. They won’t care about my dog. I’m sure it’s already clear that the noise makes my dog react and it doesn’t stop them
Does anyone have any advice on what I can do to help the dog. He doesn’t seem to have become in any way desensitised to this noise so it’s unlikely he ever will. 