I am being driven insane by a neighbors dogs that will not shut-up. Specifically, every time I go into my own backyard the horrible creatures will bark continuously and tirelessly. I already bought one of those sonic dog silencers (The one at the bottom of the page), and it has not done any good.
Do you guys have any suggestions?
Sounds cruel, but look at it this way: if you left a radio outside blaring all the time, eventually other people would call the police and have them make you turn it off—because they’d say that they shouldn’t have to listen to that noise just because you want to make it.
But with a dog they just say “oh well I can’t stop it”…
…
It’s called the “Fear of God” method.
If you can, stand inside your own house when you fire, so others cannot see you.
Aim for the side of the butt area.
~
Uhh…maybe obvious, but what about calling/stopping over at the neighbors and telling them that their dog barking is upsetting you? It’s not the dog’s fault, it’s the owners. Punishing the dog is mean. If the neighbors don’t/won’t care, call the police.
Red Ryder BB gun. Shoot in the rear quarters, to avoid their eyes. Works like a charm, won’t break the dog’s skin and your neighbors need never know. Slingshot as suggested by DougC will work also, but requires more skill to be accurate than the BB gun.
Hit 'em just a few times, and they’ll be QUIET when you’re in the yard.
Red Ryder BB gun. Make sure there are no legal restrictions against this remedy before you even think about it. There is another method: make friends with the dogs next door. You may have to use something like dog treats to enable them to become friendly with you, but by becoming their friend, you should enjoy some peace and quiet at last. If that doesn’t work, blast away, I suppose. I guess planting dumb cane along your perimeter would work, too…
How good are you at lobbing grenades? I guarantee that’ll work
You guys are kidding, right? Vigilantism is never a good idea.
Talk to the dog’s owner and if he doesn’t do something about it, then you should consider pursuing legal venues (albeit the cops would definitely be the wrong people to talk to about such matters, at least around here; I am not sure how things are handled in the states). However, just be sure that you are on the right side of the law - around here a dog is allowed to bark for 10 minutes straight and if the dog just barks a bit when you walk by, then you probably don’t even have a reason to complain.
I’ve gotten a lot of suggestions to feed the critter gravey soaked sponges…
Ask the owner to introduce you to the dogs. Give them a dog biscuit.
If you are pals, they may not bark.
Of course, they may bark if you don’t give them a cookie every time they see you…
I doubt there is any place left in Canada or the US where there is not a by-law against excessive noise caused by a dog barking. I know the law here is a that a dog cannot bark for more than half an hour in any given day cummulative. So I would call your by-law enforcement guy or gal. Having to pay a couple hundred $$ everytime you complain will probably convince your neighbours to keep their little rat inside. Shooting or poisoning the dog is pretty dumb, if you get caught you are the one in trouble, and why should you be getting the fine when it’s your neighbours that are the ones causing the problem?
No solution to offer, but my sympathies.
We have had problems with our neighbor on one side in the past, but things have been pretty calm for the past year or so. Their dog is maybe 2 years old. Really nice dog, but over the past year or so he has started barking a lot. They let him out in their yard for maybe 20 minutes at a time, during which he is apt to bark constantly. At what, I’m not sure. But it is annoying. And I anticipate it will be even more so when temperatures rise and we want to have our windows open. It surprises me that it doesn’t bother them as well.
Our situation is the opposite of yours. He does not bark when I am outside. Probably because I talk to him. And he shuts up when I tell him to. He really is a nice dog. I think he is just bored. I can open the door and yell at him to shut up, and he will. But then he will start up again a minute later. And I never hear his owners tell him to shut up.
We have a dog as well. But we don’t leave her in the yard when we are not home. When we hear her bark, we tell her to shut up. If she doesn’t, we bring her inside. She gets most of her exercise from walks/runs anyway, and mainly goes outside just to do her business. If we are inside, that is where she prefers to be.
But, like I said, otherwise things are going pretty well with these neighbors who have been problemmatic in the past. So we are hesitant to make this into a big deal. Just another way you don’t appreciate good neighbors until you have bad ones.
In my experience, your first step is to talk to the owners. Maybe that will be successful. With my previous dog, he was always very quiet when we were at home. We took to leaving him out when we were gone, until our neighbor told us he would bark constantly. We had no idea - it seemed so out of character for him. But we stopped leaving him out when we were not at home.
Unfortunately, I feel a good many folk will just say “Tough. You want quiet, move to the country.” And then you will be in the same situation, with pissed off neighbors.
Your next step is to contact the cops. They will let you know what nuisance restrictions there are - if any. It may be illegal during the night, but not at day. Or it may require continuous barking for a certain time. They might talk to the neighbors, which again, will have the neighbors hate you. But they will require that you swear out a complaint before they do anything beyond that. And you will have to decide if you want to go to such lengths.
Like I said, you have my sympathy.
Talk to the owner. This is probably your best action. Second, make friends with the dogs. If they like you they are far less likely to bark at you.
Hurting the dog is a bad idea IMO. This may very well make the dog hate you and bark at you even more (unless you just want to hurt it every time you step outside). Worse, it may make the dog apt to bite you should it get the chance. Also, should the owner catch you hurting the dog… hmmm… that could be bad.
Sometimes they have a benifit. My dogs frightened away a burgler one night from my next door neighbor’s house. Another time they scared off a bobcat that had pounced on his cat. Oddly, they made friends with the dogs after this. The dogs never bark at them now and their kids love them.
Another vote for talking to the owners.
My dog sometimes gets on a barking fit when I let her out at night. I do bring her immediately back in if it’s late, or if her barking goes on excessively long. However, my husband has the ability to ignore it, and when I’m not home she might be outside barking a little too long, a little too late.
We do try to be sensitive to our neighbors, I promise! Please don’t hurt my dog.
I guess if you get the neighbor to stop barking first, the dog might follow his lead.
You’re in California, right? Dollars to doughnuts your local government has a noise ordinance.
The steps I’d take would be, not necessarily in this order:
If the neighbor is a jerk, you can skip the first step entirely. When you go to animal control, it’s almost certain that the neighbor will deny that the dog barks excessively; that’s why you have the log and the recording. Ideally you can get AC or the cops or whoever handles barking complaints to come into your back yard with you when the dogs are outside and hear it for themselves; for various reasons, this may be impossible (if the dogs are only outside after work hours, for example, or if the gummint can’t come out at a specific time).
DO NOT SHOOT THE DOG! DO NOT HURT THE DOG! This is both unethical and possibly illegal. Even if it were both ethical and legal, it would still risk turning a bad situation terrible. Can you imagine your neighbor’s response if he sees you shooting his dog? Do you think he’d be mollified by the excuse that it’s just a BB gun? If you think you hate your neighbor now, just wait until your neighbor finds out you’re shooting his dog.
There are effective, legal, ethical solutions to this problem. Good luck!
Daniel
Entrapment!
The dogs will bark at strangers near the yard.
That does seem to be the problem. . . . I’ve not seen a noise ordinance that distinguishes between barking at neighbors and barking at strangers. Maybe those crazy Californians do things differently.
Daniel
Some former neighbors had a nasty tempered rotweiler. Ran through the flower beds chasing up and down our rear fence line with the neighbors dogs on other side. Neighbors warned re local leash law. Threatened neighbors to effect that that dog was ‘fair game’ on my property and to keep it fenced or on a leash at all time or else.Next day or so it was out and a few rounds in the ground got their attention. A fence was put up shortly thereafter.
Mean time a “Dog Dazzler” was ordered an arrived in the mail while I was mowing along the fence. The bitch had come up to the fence and snarled, bared her teeth, etc. just as the mail arrived. Took a break to check the mail and IT had arrived. On the next turn around the yard the bitch came up to me again and I blipped the dazzler. She was shocked by the sound (inaudible to humans), backed up and came back to fence very angry worked up. Gave it a stronger blip to which she responded by backing up and returning to fence with more attitude than before. This time I just pressed the switch and held it down. She backed up, turned tail and dissappeared. About a week later around 3:00 AM she was sitting in driveway howling and barking. I slipped the door open quietly and pressed the button down and she promptly shut up and dissappeared. Repeated the same about two weeks later.
A week after that I went to the mail box and she was sitting on her porch with her head on her paws surveying the landscape. Again I pressed the button down and held it. She came off the porch, made a half a dozen circles at the foot of the steps, ran along their lot line and fence, jumped a 3" chain link into another neighbors yard, back into hers and she was cured.
Note that the instructions said the Dazzler was only good for 12 to 15 feet and that it didn’t even phaze some dogs. It didn’t bother another neighvobs sheep dog nor another muttt.
From then on she would get out of my sight ASAP.
You could go over and stand at six inches away from the dog’s chain limit, and have a bark-your-head-off contest with it.
That wouldn’t shut the dog up, but it’d make you feel better.
Sooooo… let me get this straight. You used this doodad when the dog was barking and it stopped her. Not satisfied with this, you saw her lying on the porch minding her own business and NOT barking at you, and you used this thing again?
Wow. You’re a real turd. :rolleyes:
Max.