Hey Fuckhead neighbor! Pull your dog inside, you inconsiderate fuckbag!

The BBQ Pit
1

The neighbor is a bit of a boob. He tends to do things in an abrasive fashion, whether it’s snowblowing his level driveway at 5:30 am (with the house lights illuminating the neighborhood, and his big snowblower headlight illuminating whatever is left), to having a yard project start at 6:30 on a Saturday morning, where the guys are cutting down 60’ + trees with their chain saws, and chopping and stacking the wood for the better part of the next three days. Early and loudly.

OK. you have no consideration for your neighbors. We get it. And for the most part, you are a tolerable human being, even if you suck it hard as a neighbor. But now, you are moving into total douchbag territory.

Mr. Neighbor’s dog died, and his kids seemed to miss it. So, 2 days after burying Rover 1 right next to the front door with a tombstone to mark it, he goes out and gets Rover 2. Rover 2 is a barker. Not a nice dog in general, it barks at everything… him, his kids, my kids me, a bird, a car, nothing, everything. The dog is nuts. However, I realize I have to live with the fact that his dog is a barker during the day, and it’s better to try to put these things into perspective.

But the past 2 months have me going over the edge. Rover 2 has woken my entire house up 5 times in the last 2 months, between 2:30 and 4 AM. Barking, of course. But worse, the dog is outside in freezing rain, snow, below zero temperatures, and brutal winds. The winter here has been brutal, and snow has been on the ground for 3+ streets straight.

The dog apparently is put outside late at night to do his late constitutional, and it seems that Mr. Neighbor sometimes forgets to bring Cujo back into the house. So, the dog tends to bark. For hours. Non-stop. All night. (or at least I wake up, or my wife elbows me, or someone else comes into the room to let me know what’s going on.)

It’s obnoxious. So, after waiting 10-15 minutes to make sure the dog wasn’t just put outside to poo, I call. I wake him up and he’s always considerate. Always apologizes, and goes to get the dog. Forgot Cujo was out there, locked the door and went to bed. Hey, that’s nice. I wouldn’t want to inconvenient you to take care of your dog, especially when it is freezing outside. I mean, I hate Cujo with every fiber of my being, but I don’t want to see it or any other animal freeze to death outside. That’s not necessary. You have a dog, you have responsibilities. Waiting for Cujo to crap before going to bed is one of them.

So, after a few calls, he gets the hint (or so I thought) as I didn’t hear the dog barking in the wee hours of the morning. And then… of course. The outrageous barking in the middle of a freezing rain/sleet show. For at least 15 minutes. I call, and he has no idea what I’m talking about. Can’t be his dog, and why am I calling? I ask how he could think that’s not his dog? Oh because, he built the dog a nice doggy door to come and go as he pleases. He figures if the dog gets cold, he’ll come in himself.

Except genius forgot that if something happened to the door, blocked it in some way, that it could be a problem. A big problem. Not just for the dog, but to my sleep cycle, the general mood of the family, and my patience and sanity. So, I lost it. I said some things on the phone that made him get his dog.

I saw him the next day, and he apologized, but wanted me to know that this was just a one-time problem. Shouldn’t happen again, that sort of thing. I accept his apology, but with a caveat. I tell him that it makes me a bit uncomfortable seeing the dog freezing, and I am going to look into who to call for possible animal abuse. That did not go over well, but too bad.

Well, it happened again this week. I called, he took care of it, and I am contemplating what to do. Seems these folks have to catch him in the act of being bad to his pet, and they aren’t open when this is occurring. So then, I have to document it. Fuck that… I don’t want to be out freezing in the rain any more than Cujo does.

So it looks like I’ll have to live with it For now. But spring is coming, and if it continues, I guess I’m headed outside with the video camera.

But in the meantime. Hey fuckhead neighbor! Take care of your pet! You wanted him, not me, so if you don’t care if he’s freezing outside, maybe you should get rd of him! And I don’t care if your kids will be upset. Just think how upset they’d be if an official truck came by, scooped him up, and threw him in the back and took him away.

Why does someone’s assholish behavior bounce back on me to where I’m the one that will feel guilty if I make the call to get this dog taken out of this situation? I care about that dog more than he does… and I hate that dog!

Fuck.

2

What kind of dog?

You threatened the guy because the doggy door got blocked once?

3

What doggy door?

4

I almost thought about reporting a neighbor for this same behavior. The dog, which is a barking dog like your one, is in snow that is up to his shoulders! He has to leap through the snow to come and bark at us walking by.

Equally as scary is: the front fence is about four feet high, and he cannot get over it. But his side fence is only about three feet high, and the dog can put his front paws on top of it. My mom was attacked by a neighbor’s dog, taking her daily walk, one day, and I’m a little scared of aggressive neighborly dogs. I know the dog is just bored out of his mind (and probably cold); that doesn’t mean it won’t viciously bite me.

The only reason I haven’t is a)I’ve only actually caught the dog out once myself, and b) everyone in my little neighborhood knows each other, it seems, and I am pretty sure they would guess it was us who reported it. And I love this house and neighborhood, and don’t want to be that kind of neighbor, to be honest.

5

This one.

6

Where did he threaten the guy? Unless you consider “If the dog keeps getting stuck outside in the cold, I’ll report it” as a threat?

7

Oh. Missed that.
Still, sounds like the door is either too small or the dog is too stupid to use it.
ETA: or maybe the guy actually ties up the dog, in which case the presence of a doggy door is moot.

8

Why are you feeling bad, Stink Fish? Never mind the dog being out in bad weather, dog owners in municipal areas aren’t allowed to let their pets affect other people. I think you should report it every time his dog is barking too much - that shit drives me absolutely crazy.

9

The thing I don’t get about people who let their dogs bark… do the owners of these dogs not hear the barking!!! Or just managed to tune it out?

10

BTDT.

The house next door to mine is a rental. Bunch of flaky college kids living there decided to get a dog. Within days, I look out my kitchen window and see this poor dog tied to a tree 24/7. One fine Saturday morning, this poor dog wakes me at 7:30 a.m. with the nonstop barking. I was hungover and pissed off. I look out the window. It’s raining. Dog is soaking wet, pinned to the tree because his chain is tangled, and is obviously miserable.

Bark. Bark. Bark. Bark. Bark. Bark.

I figure, my bedroom is upstairs and in the back of the house and if I can hear that poor dog and be woken up by it, so can they. So I put on my slippers and go bang on the neighbor’s door. Chick answers and I ask if that’s her dog barking? What dog? she says.

The one that’s barking right now. That I can see from my kitchen window, who is soaking wet, freezing cold, and pinned to a fucking tree, that’s which dog. It’s barking in distress, you clueless c**t.

Oh. That dog. I’ll go check on him.

Within a couple weeks, I heard the neighbors go outside and the chick screamed. I am assuming the dog finally strangled itself with its chain on the tree and thankfully, they did not get another dog. I could not bring myself to look out there to find out what she was screaming about. I knew it was the dog. After I heard that scream, I never saw or heard that dog again, poor fella.

The mystery to me, aside from dogowner deafness syndrome, is this. Why would you get a dog if you don’t want to interact with it? Why get a dog just to tie it to something and ignore it? What does that serve, for the humans? Obviously, it does nothing for the dog.

11

That story makes me kind of ill, Dogzilla. I hate it that animals are so badly treated through no fault of their own.

12

I know. The whole thing happened so fast, I didn’t even have enough time to document observations of neglect to build a case for Animal Control. I’d been in contact with them. The dog had a little doghouse under a tree in the shade, food and water, but what kind of life is being tied to a tree and ignored?

I was this far away from sneaking over there in the middle of the night and just dognapping him. He died before I could get up the guts to steal someone’s dog. :frowning:

I look at it this way: we can’t save 'em all, as much as we’d like to be able to. And this dog is better off dead than being neglected and abused by these stupid irresponsible kids. But he would have been much better off if I’d begun my life of crime by stealing him and spoiling him rotten. I’ll feel badly about not doing that til my dying day.

13

And that’s the difference between you and them, I guess - you feel badly for someone else’s inhumane behaviour, and they probably don’t feel bad for torturing* an animal to death (I assume if they felt badly, they wouldn’t have let it happen).

*Yes, I’m aware that’s a loaded, hyperbolic word, but if we did that to a human being it would be considered torture.

14

I’ve considered reporting my neighbor who left his dog outside most of the time, in conditions nowhere near as bad this this. And his dog never, ever barked. It’s not like they are going to haul the guy off the prison. A report should be just that - There might be a problem, please have someone more objective come out and have a look.

“Let my dog bark?” I’m sorry, really, my dog barks and the only way I can stop him is by bringing him inside. He is making some kind of sound 24 hrs a day and, when he is outside, he likes to bark sometimes. It’s his hobby I guess but also a part of his job that he may take too seriously. Any of the other 5 dogs that he can see in neighboring yards may have started it though, or the mailman, or those kids that keep running into my front yard, or the strangers who wonder through the woods behind my house. Or that peacock a few doors down - that’s a noisy animal.

15

This may be news to you, but they CAN be trained not to bark. Sure, some dogs have a more vocal personality, but you might find that putting effort into training and give cues to the dog as to when it’s appropriate to speak and when it’s not, is a solution. Barring that, if you bring him inside when he gets riled up, that isn’t that big of a problem. A good dog owner knows their dogs, their personalities, what they’re inclined to do, and most importantly, exert some kind of control over these situations.

At any rate, I don’t think this thread is about a dog who barks once in a while. It’s about dogs that woof woof woof all the time, at inappropriate hours. Or perhaps I should rephrase my original question. I don’t get the people who let their dogs bark excessively. Are they not disturbed by the sounds themselves?

16

As a neighbour, I truly don’t care about your dog’s hobbies or natural predilections towards barking or who started it; if he’s barking for longer than 30 seconds outside, he needs to stop it. YOU need to stop it. End of story.

17

And crying kids. Put a fucking muzzle on them!

So would feeding them kibble.

18

Being chained to a tree helplessly with no access to shelter, food, or water, in pouring rain qualifies as torture in my book. YMMV of course.

19

Same way people don’t hear their kids shrieking their lungs out, I reckon. And kids are generally a lot shriller than dogs, so I really don’t get that.

The dog owners who really, really piss me off, though, are the ones in our neighborhood who let their dogs roam around in the wee hours, riling my dogs up and shitting in my front yard. We have a leash law in this town, assholes. And my dogs can’t get up and go shit on their own in the middle of the night because I have to lock their dog door because otherwise they bark at your goddamn mutt and annoy the other neighbors.

20

Apples and oranges; being chained to a tree in all weather and neglected until you choke yourself to death on your own chain isn’t the same as feeding someone food that wasn’t made specifically for their species.