Neighbour's reactive dog, where do we go from here?

[HopelesslyHopeful87]

Myself and my neighbours both live in council houses. We are terraced, I'm mid, they are end so we are their only adjoining neighbour. We both have dogs, mine a French bulldog and theirs is a German shepherd. My dog is 4. They got theirs last year, so not a year old yet.

Their dog is very reactive to other animals especially my dog. When they are both outside at the same time he goes berserk. He has broken all of the fencing between our properties since they have owned him by trying to get through to get to my dog when she is in our garden at the same time as he is in theirs. We had to do a patchwork job on the fence until we saved enough to replace the whole stretch.

A few weeks ago he broke another section big enough to get his paws and mouth through and bit my dog and tried to drag her under the fence by his mouth. I reported to 101 but apparently its not a crime for a dog to attack another dog so I couldn't do anything. Fortunately she wasn't injured, just a bit shaken.

It is our perimeter responsibility so we have just paid £2k to have all the fencing replaced but he is still clawing and jumping, scratching and banging ferociously at all of the fence, the fence has been up all of 2 weeks and it's going to be destroyed pretty quickly if he keeps doing this and it will be our responsibility to replace as its our perimeter.

Were now having to fetch our dog inside every time we hear them let him out. We cannot enjoy the garden or relax because we are constantly having to listen out for him. I can't leave the door open and let my dog free roam because they blame me ie he wouldn't be reacting if we didn't have a dog.

When he dragged her through the fence their reaction was basically sorry but maybe when you replace the fence he won't do it. We've replaced the fence and it continues.

How do I stop this? I can't force them to train their dog. I can't force them to neuter their dog (if that would even help?), do I report them to someone? If so, who? I don't want to fall out with them. We've lived next to each other for almost 10 years and not had any issues but since they've got their dog it's been a living nightmare.

I know this sounds so petty but I can't afford to keep replacing a fence that I'm not breaking! I need to keep my dog safe and our garden needs to be secure so she can't get out in the roads.

Get some of this - Pet Corrector

Spray it every time it happens. Hopefully the dog is scared of it and will start to learn. It may scare your dog too, but if the end result is the other dog stops trying to get at yours at least it will be temporary.

I think 101 is wrong. It’s an offence. Anytime their dog behave in a way to make another person fearful it’s an offence. Even in it’s own garden. Even if it doesn’t bite. Find the relevant law and ring back. Do the council have a dog warden

The neighbour's dog's behaviour is fear based, and yet you are trying to suggest that adding additional fear will somehow fix things.

If you had a child that was scared of clowns and spiders, would you take them to the circus, wait until they spotted a clown and cried, then whip a tarantula out of your pocket in the hope that that shuts them up?

Presumably you can see how ridiculous that would be.

Are you actually joking? The op's dog has the absolute right to go in her own garden. Talk about victim blaming

The pitbull was owned by the grandmother and uncle. It had attacked other people and dogs previously so had form. Early new years day it went ballistic, probably due to fireworks, and attacked and killed the 5 year old granddaughter

I don't think you should be trying to train someone else's dog - certainly not with fear based methods, that is an insane suggestion - but not with hot dogs or other treats either. You can't fix this dog's behaviour. Its owners are the biggest influence and they don't give a shit. That will shape the dog's behaviour along with its temperament which is clearly very nasty given its attack on your child, violent destruction of your fence and brutal attack on your dog. I don't think it will help in any way for the dog to learn you have a supply of hot dogs in your garden as well as a victim it's intent on killing. If it was your dog and you had the support of an expert and a safe environment (no other dog or child) maybe you could resolve its aggression but none of that is the case.

This kind of behaviour is usually boundary guarding rather than fear based. Mine and my neighbours dogs are both guarders, though not to this extent. Their dog will hear mine outside and come running to the fence to growl. Mine then starts behaving like the Rocky Balboa of the canine world (in reality he's frightened of our chihuhua).

My dog is very friendly outside of "his" turf and very tolerent of other animals who he knows have been invited into his space and any time I have seen the neighbours dog outside of their garden it has appeared calm and friendly.

The only way it can be resolved is for the guarding dog to be trained not to gaurd which is out of your control. I'd suggest popping around for a chat armed with the number of a local training class or behaviourist and if that doesn't work talk to the HA.

Jesus

Ellie Lawrenson?

Yes

Instruct a solicitor to insist they stop damaging your property.... If it was a dc damaging the fence you would seek legal advice I assume? They are responsible for a ddog just the same. They need to install a fence their side.

Yes, I don’t understand why the neighbours aren’t paying for the fence damage either? How bizarre!

Can you plant conifers or trees for screening. Personally if your fence is being damaged its criminal damage dog or not. I would get a solicitor letter sent to her to say unless she keeps her dog under control she will pay for damage.

Before l retired, l worked for EH for the LA. We dealt with ASB, had people that went out to deal with any dog related problems. Your LA should be helping you with this. The dog is aggressive. Your NDN are responsible for the damage to your fence, it's their dog.
We have a Border collie, our NDN have a rottweiler, they are as bad as each other for barking. However we each tell them to stop, if they don't they are sent into the house.
You must take it further and insist that either EH or the police help you.
Good luck.

Sorry for coming back to this so late.

After this thread I emailed the antisocial dept at the council. They never acknowledged my email or got back to me.

I left 3 messages for my housing officer. Ignored.

Since then things have not improved so we made the decision to fence off a section of our garden to stop our dog being near the fence to see if that improved things. Our dog is a bit depressed by this and now cannot have access to her usual toileting spot. In turn she has been peeing in my kitchen overnight which I guess is a sign of stress. I'm annoyed it's took me to do this to guage whether it improves things.

It has slightly but dog is still howling all day long and scrambling up our fence on a daily basis.

I've embarrassingly lost my patience with the council today and reported things again. Finally I've had a call back. They say they will take it seriously. They're going to do an estate walk and see if they can capture any of the dogs barking/howling which will then I turn give them a reason to go to the house and say they've seen this behaviour without saying I've reported it. I've provided recordings and diary information to them as to when this behaviour has occurred. They've been told how much its impacting our lives and my dogs quality of life and ability to roam round her own garden freely.

So not much of an update other than its taken me 2 months to get the council to actually listen and start acting.

Hopefully I can come back and update further soon.

Did you manage to resolve this OP?

I've been through similar with a dangerous and out of control dog owned by private tenants next door so I'll list the useful things I learned (we got rid of our neighbours after 18 months of hell):

Dog warden can only act if a dog is roaming in public spaces, cannot do anything about dogs in people's houses/ gardens

RSPCA has a very high threshold for what are acceptable conditions and your neighbour's dog would not interest them

Police are pretty useless- multiple neighbours called the police after the dog attacked a man and he needed hospital treatment. He didn't press charges so all the police did was a community order that they did not enforce. If he'd pressed charges it might have been better.

A landlord is legally responsible if their tenant is behaving dangerously or allowing dangerous behaviour. This is what worked for us in the end- and the tenants were asked to leave as they refused to rehome/ PTS the dog. Crucially- a dog being out of control even in their house/ garden counts as dangerous.

In your situation I would also make a lot of noise to the landlord/ council about the damage to your fence and the cost. Pursue a claim.

Also I would stress to the council/ landlord that you're frightened that the dog will inevitably escape eventually and attack your dog and child. It has already tried to and succeeded in the case of the dog. You should have pressed charges for that really (hindsight). This is the main thing that will help you.

Another angle is anti social noise (barking). Council definitely interested in this. You can report on the website via a form where I live. It's under the same heading as a hate crime here! Quote the complaints to the landlord or just forward them them acknowledgments you get. Don't assume council depts know what each other are doing.

In the end with our situation, what worked was constantly being in touch with all relevant channels until they acted. If I ever gave it a rest they would say "oh you went quiet we thought it had improved".

Good luck. It's a horrible situation.

I hope you have made some progress OP. It's horrible.

I'm having a similar problem - not a council house though and I don't have a dog. My neighbours' dogs do that when I go out in the garden :(

The only saving grace is that they respond to the command 'FUCK OFF'.

I'd love to say we've made steps towards progress but, alas, we have not. We've had to erect another fence our side to keep our dog out of the main garden so now her area is considerably smaller with no grass because we just needed to keep next doors dog off our main fence. So this fence goes across our whole garden between the back yard and the lawn IYSWIM.

Still the dog is reactive. Our garden is hard to explain but as a council house we have some brick outbuildings in this yard area which we physically cannot fence off and the walkway between our kitchen and back door and these sheds has another 1m length of fence. As I understand it this area used to be a walkway between all the houses in the terrace but is no longer used as such.

So next doors dog is still jumping mad harassing and barking uncontrollably at this smaller piece of fence when our dog is in her yard.

I've never had a response from the council regarding their planned walk round the estate and to be honest I just haven't chased it up.

It's only going to get worse as the weather improves and my dog wants to be outside more. In the cold, rain and wind she will go outside to do her business and have a little sniff about but in the spring and summer she loves to lounge outside on a chair and sunbathe and pretty much be outside as she pleases. I usually leave my back door open and she can free roam but this is going to have to be reconsidered this year.

You really need to chase up the council @HopelesslyHopeful87 because this isn’t fair on you or the dog, one of the good things about having a landlord is that you have someone to intervene. Good luck.

Reading the new comments here has jogged my memory and I have just emailed the housing management team a very firm email at what can be done.

Have you got a town or parish councillor you could involve in this? It sounds incredibly stressful.

My advice
get a camera in the back garden to record everything. Trust me you will need this .
go to your local counciller / MP
local councilors are normally pretty good In my experience

find out who there housing officer is you may have the same one and make a complaint

tell them you can’t use your garden as the neighbors dog is dangerous and aggressive
explain you have paid xxx to replace the fencing that neighbour dog damaged

look up the councils own rules on owning a pet - quote those rules to them -cctv will come in useful in showing how aggressive the dog is