It’s driving me up the wall.
Every. Single. Day. It is let out to produce that auraly unchanging series of deep bass barks.
Correct me if I am wrong but dogs tend to understand “shut up” if not frantic shouts of their name to mean (in dog-thought language) ‘stop barking’. So why don’t the next door neighbours (one of which is a former contestant on ‘Stars in their Eyes’) train their dog to shut up?? Our dog goes out, does it’s business, and comes straight back in without a sound. She only barks at suspicious sounds from the front of the house, which is rare.
I know just what you mean. I passed by an apartment building last week and saw a little girl playing with a puppy. She was barking at it to try to get it to bark! I really wanted to stop and say, “Don’t do that! You’ll want it to shut up when it’s not little anymore!” but I couldn’t. That poor dog is going to be confused later on.
Sometimes my cat drive me a little crazy with his meowing, but at least I can do something about it. You have my pity.
Thanks. But I actually enjoy the sound of a cat meowing.
I guess it’s because I am a cat person.
We’d have a cat if it wasn’t for the fact that my step-dad has a mysterious psychological complex about owning a cat (re: the pain of it’s inevitable death*)
[sub]* I believe the joy of owning a cat more than makes up for the pain of it’s death[/sub]
Do you enjoy the sound of a cat meowing over and over and over again while you are trying to sleep? Just because he wants to be petted? And he won’t come to you to be petted, he wants you to come to him and hold him? And he won’t shut up until you do? Even though you yell and throw pillows?* And your SO sleeps through the whole thing?
I’m a cat person too, but he is a spoiled little heifer. I’d have killed him already if he weren’t so freakin adorable at times.
Too bad you can’t have one. They’re really great, even when insane (like mine are).
*Yes, he dodged the pillow. I wasn’t aiming at him anyway.
Actually, I have a dog-training book that advocates teaching your dog first to “Speak,” which then makes it easier to teach it to “not speak” (using the command “Enough,” which means “Sometimes you are allowed to do that, but I don’t want you to do it right now” as opposed to “No” for “You may never do that”).
Our Phyllis was the first dog we were able to teach to “Speak” because she already loved to bark. We taught her “Speak” and then “Enough.” Works like a charm.
Some dogs bark more than others. I have two shelties and the breed is notorious for excessive barking! My dogs have definitely acquired that breed trait. Oh boy have they ever!
I have taught them the “quiet” command. Unfortunately, I’ve never been able to make “quiet” last for more than a few minutes. It will stop them from barking but won’t stop them from starting up again. If I need them to keep quiet (e.g. I’m on the phone, etc.), I have better luck putting them in a sit/stay. They don’t bark then.
I really don’t mind the barking anymore–but there’s no reason my neighbors need to learn to ignore it! Barking can be managed.
Because of their “barkiness,” I don’t put the dogs out in the backyard during early morning (before 9:00 am or so) or late evening hours (after 8:00 pm or so). I do let them out at other times, but I will call them in right away if they’ve gone into a barking fit. I’ve noticed that they’re much likely to start barking now that they know it will mean being called inside. However, it’s not fool proof (hence the not letting them in the yard early in the morning or late in the evening) so I don’t let them out when I can’t readily call them back in.
Sure, sometimes it would be nice to let them out into my very nice fenced yard at 7:00 am or 9:00 pm not have to deal with the morning/evening walk in crappy weather. But I acquired the dogs knowing the breed is bark-prone and it would be something I’d have to deal with. Plus, I need the exercise anyway.
Unless you live far away from your nearest neighbor, there’s no excuse for leaving a dog outside to just bark its fool head off.
My cats don’t meow when we’re sleeping. They tap. our. fucking. faces. with claws extended – or do the Kitty Dance on my breasts, all the while purring, until I wake up and play with her. It’s really quite exhausting if they do it every night of the week. And yet they continue to live. Amazing, really.
We had to return a dog to the no-kill shelter because of her barking. We did not get her as a puppy, so we couldn’t train her out of it. She would bark from the moment we let her outside until the time we let her back in. She also hated thunderstorms, and would bark and whine continually during the rain.
We tried everything, from a muzzle to an electronic collar that would buzz her when she barked excessively.
Are you on good terms with the neighbors, that you can express your concerns?
Arr! In October, some people a couple doors down and across the back alley got a shitty little rat-dog. It had access to their back patio through a pet-door, and it spent virtually all of its time barking. High pitched, continual yapping. It barked at birds. It barked at the ALRT going by (4 blocks away). It barked at dimly-heard dogs on the next block.
It. Never. Stopped.
The worst thing was, the owners never did anything to discourage it. Maybe they were all congenitally deaf, but I was always amazed at how they adapted to the noise when it was right on their patio, when it was driving me out of my skull at a distance. I’d look out and confirm that both their cars were there, and try to imagine how they could tolerate being so close to something so damned annoying.
Now me, I’m not much of a complainer. I put up with it for months before uttering a peep. Then one night at about 3:00am, I realized that spending three hours trying to get to sleep while fuming about how fucking ignorant people could be wasn’t reasonable. And I like to be reasonable.
So I wrote them a nice, reasonable letter, outlining what a negative impact their dog was having on life in the neighborhood, itemizing several basic activities (sleeping, watching a movie, working, enjoying a meal) that their yapping dog was intruding on for everyone on the block. I emphasized the importance of neighborly consideration, and with that in mind I drew their attention to the bylaw which states:
I pointed out that the city penalizes offenders “not less than $100” for each offense, and said that it wouldn’t serve anyone for them to be fined out of the blue, but that henceforth the dog’s barking would be carefully documented, and unless some improvement in the situation was noted, the Bylaw Enforcement office would be called.
Even when spelled out like that, they still made absolutely no effort to discourage the dog from barking. None. Twice since then I heard muffled barking inside their house, which they remedied by putting the dog outside to bark.
Given their attitude, I anticipated a feud. I set myself the task of documenting (with logs and videotape) the dog’s behaviour, and was astonished at how bad it actually was. It had around eight bouts of continual (ie; no period of silence lasting 60 seconds) barking a day, which typically lasted around 45 miinutes. Occasionally they lasted over two hours. This was punctuated with brief outbursts at passing things. (I spent a week documenting this.)
Feeling more prepared than Batman by the time the promised 30 days had passed, I called the City one Monday morning about a month-and-a-half ago. The conversation was very brief. The woman that answered anticipated the reason for my call: “You’ve got a problem with animal noise.” (I was sitting at my desk, and the barking was loud enough for her to divine that immediately.) She took their address, and my contact info, and I hunkered down for a long, ugly fight. But I was prepared. Oh yeah, I was obsessively prepared. I would prevail in this noble struggle.
The next day the dog was gone. Just gone.
It caught me off guard, but in retrospect I suppose I should have expected that people who can’t be bothered to expend any energy training their dog, (and who were never observed paying any attention to it at all), wouldn’t invest a lot of energy (or fines) into keeping it. Hell, maybe they hated it as much as I did.
Still, now that I have the opportunity for quiet reflection, I do wonder what became of that dog. Did they take advantage of the thirty-day warning to find another home for it should the need arise? Or did they drown it in the bathtub before they even paid the ticket?
SHHHHHHHHH!. Lissener might hear you, and then we will have to defend that statement to the death.
I recommend you call the law like the other posters have mentioned. It works. And then they won’t get in a feud with you (unless the cop tells them who ratted).
Ask your neighbors to train the dog to stop barking continuously. One way for them to do this is to give it a “no bark!” command, and then squirt some Binaca in its mouth if it keeps barking after that. Dogs don’t like the taste of Binaca, and at some point won’t want to open their mouths after they get the no bark command.
I’ve heard that simply yelling at the dog to stop barking is pretty ineffective, because it just thinks you’re barking too.
If your neighbors are unwilling to train their dog, you should then treat it like you would any other noise problem. Leave notes on their door, talk to their landlord (if they have one), call the police, etc.
We had a minor problem with our next-door neighbor’s dog barking whenever we’d enter our backyard. (Unfortunately we only have a wire fence separating our yards and the dog could see us while we were on our property. She’d probably have barked at the noise of us anyway.) So we started feeding her cheap doggie biscuits that we got at the dollar store. Now we’re her best friends.
you want to kill you neighbor’s dog. but the problem isn’t the dog,it’s the neighbors who went out and got a cute little puppy with NO CLUE what kind of work, training and attention went into it. so, they grow tired of it’s wet nose and puppy breathe. now that cute little puppy is in their way and tied to a box outside. OF COURSE it’s gonna bark. it thinks it’s part of the family. but, now gets little attention at all, if any. every stupid person that does this needs to be tied to a box outside. in the cold, the rain, the snow, knowing that there is a warm bed and loving family just inside that door. yes, it’s annoying and terrible, but the people are the problem, not the poor innocent dog that just wants love. so, don’t want to kill the neighbor’s dog, turn that anger to the neighbors.
As I covered in a past thread on the same subject. I know it’s really the owner’s fault (they actually aquired the dog in adulthood or ‘full size’… so I guess I should really blame the dog’s previous owners)
However, when my brain is in a state of almost-rage, rational thought does not get a word in. Pit thread results. (shortly after desire to kill immediate source of rage)
In the current owner’s defence, they do seem to let the dog back in more quickly these days (when this problem first arose the dog would bark for a good 4 hours, but these days it seems to stop after 10 or so minutes, which I assume means the owners let the dog back in the house)
At least all these dogs don’t give you heart attacks. I’ve got two white standard poodles at home, one who barks a good amount (but not too much to be annoying) and a quiet one who has the sharpest, loudest bark you’ve ever heard. It’d be almost better if he barked all the time, but he has to do it at the most inopportune times and scare the crap out of me.
It’s usually when I’m watching TV or when I’m on the computer. Then he sees a leaf moving outside the window. And then
I taught my nephew’s cockatiel how to meow, which would bring the cat tearing into the room. The bird would then laugh maniacally.
The law in my city simply states that owners are required to curb excessive barking, but no specific time frames. Where I used to live allowed 5 minutes before you could call the police (Who’s going to time that? Oh yeah. My mother, who has sat there with her kitchen timer in one hand and phone in the other).
My sister’s fiance has an Irish Setter who WHINES constantly. I would rather he barked a bit then shut up.
But then again, I am a cat person also. As I type, one is wandering around upstairs meowing, looking for attention.
