Hi we recently moved in to a quite cul-de-sac, and we have a dog that i have to admit he made noise, the council next door were working on the empty property to fix it up but it was a right mess and it took them 3 months, from 7.30am to 4pm each day all we heard was bang bang bang and drill drill drill, really really got me angry, it really upset our dog as well, he would bark when there was loud banging etc, quite often there were 3 or 4 vans parked outside our house and the workmen would slam the van doors and again cause our dog to bark who was in the enclosed side garden with the kitchen door open so he could come in when he liked.
We got a letter from the council saying they had been a complaint from a neighbor about the barking which from there point of view i fully understand, however it was really the council workmen that were causing the noise nuisance in the first place, anyway we accepted that we needed to calm our dog down and i took a letter to each of our neighbors in the cul-de-sac telling them that the council had been in touch about our dog barking and i promised them i would calm him down, in fact the neighbor that complained also said that the dog barked all night because we left him outside, however this was a complete lie, we never ever leave our dog outside in fact we never shut the door to leave him out there.
I bought a trainer collar i had him castrated and since then which was about 6 weeks ago he has been fantastic both things have worked, if he hears the postman or hears a car door slam then he will bark but we stop him straight away with the buzzer or vibrate on the collar, he will bark now perhaps 5 or 6 times during the day between 8.30am and 8pm for a maximum 10 seconds sometimes it's only like 2 seconds, so basically he barks for about 45 seconds to 1 minute during a 8 hour or so period, both me and my wife were only saying last weekend how happy we were with him and how well it was going, we both hate noise as well and were delighted to get this house in a quite location.
Imagine my shock and horror and anger as well when on Thursday morning when we got a letter from the council saying they were coming to see us the following day again about our dog continuously barking throughout the day,
the woman from the council came in to the cul-de-sac and went to all the houses that i could see anyway to ask if our dog was a noise problem, luckily i had already been to people who i knew did not have any problem with our dog and in fact they couldn't believe that whoever had complained in the first place was complaining again.
When the council woman came in i told her how angry i was about this and that we had calmed in right down and he was now a nice calm relaxed dog, she said however that the person that had complained again said we leave him locked outside even in pouring rain for 2 hours at a time continuously barking, i told her this is complete rubbish, my wife is long term ill and she goes back to bed every afternoon at around 2pm while 6pm, my son works full time nights and goes to bed at 8am and gets up at 4pm, so does she think that i am going to allow the dog to bark all the time when they are in bed, this person is lying but i cannot work out why, she told us that all the other people in the cul-de-sac said he did not bark that much at all and he certainly is not a noise nuisance however she still said she needs to monitor the situation, what can we do about this though it's is causing us stress and i'm not well myself and this makes us feel worse and it's not on, we are keeping a diary of the times he barks and for how long, for instance since Friday morning at 11.30 he has barked 14 times for a total of 61 seconds and that's up to 12.35am Monday morning when I'm writing this by the way 4 of those were in the house not outside, i really need to know what action we can take to stop these allegations, this person is causing us real stress and without good reason.
john.