The critical thing that all us decent people need to remember when dealing with jerks is that nothing, and I do mean nothing, that comes out of their face is the truth. Except by accident or coincidence. Or the exceedingly rare case where the truth is actually the most advantageous thing for them.
One of the many lessons they teach in cop school. Not that I’ve attended, but I became good friends with a few LEOs who were neighbors or customers.
So while they are talking, you ought not be reacting to what they say because it’s pure BS. Just the tone of how they say it. And even then the good ones can fake a reasonable tone while totally plotting to kill you, steal from you, vandalize your life, etc.
I live smack dab in the middle of MAGA territory, you would think that I’d have that figured out by now. Le sigh.
To the OP, I think that @Ssounder has a good idea which won’t force you to have chicken wire on your fence.
The one I tried out was very sensitive and they might go off when your neighbors are next to your fence, you can just blame that on a malfunctioning watering system. It shouldn’t be an issue because clearly they don’t think that putting unwanted water in someone else’s yard is a problem worth bothering with.
Yeah mostly benign. A few moderately annoying and a few very good.
But I’ve dealt with unreasonable people in several other capacities. Corporate folk, chairs of other departments, patients including the vaccine reluctant.
No unreasonable person thinks of themselves as unreasonable. And sometimes I can get them to come to a reasonable place. Sometimes.
If I was in your place my concern would be 90% their dog getting hurt by my dog (in my case, dogs). And I get that the path of least resistance is to just take care of it. In my case our neighbor with the narrower picket fence now has a mini French bull dog maybe six months old now? The dad has no problem letting their dog at when my dogs are in the yard and it yaps at the fence. My two go apeshit. (Mini Aussie of 44# and half mini Aussie half Border Collie of 56#)
Yeah my dogs are louder but my worry is that at some point they’ll dig through or knock over or jump (and I think they could), or the little thing finds a hole, and that appetizer is torn apart as they defend their space and home from the very small tiny yappy wolf. It is a solidly constructed fence but still.
So I grab them in. Each time. Still have communicated and mom of house at least tries.
Your being on record as warning of the risk to their dog and that while fixing that risk is their responsibility you would be willing to work together on it just seems prudent to me.
From my POV your unilaterally taking care of it creates potential exposure if the fix fails and their dog comes to harm.
@Dinsdale REALLY shouldn’t have the neighbors messing with his fence at all. My neighbors messed up my fence when they tried doing things to it on their side.
Update - rat dog hasn’t been in our yard since - which is good.
Looking out the window, I noticed the neighbors have several sheets of plywood leaning up against their back neighbors’ fence (one of which blew down as I was looking.) Assume the dog had been getting into THAT yard as well (those neighbors also have a dog). Really looks swell - but it is their yard…
So I went out to pull some weeds, and noticed the neighbors had leant thick paving stones against the bottom of our fence all along that side. As a wise person once observed:
So I pushed a few of them down so they weren’t leaning against our fence. Will get to the rest of them later. Will see what we do if they are stood back up. Probably speak to the guy when we see him walking the dogs, and after that fails, send them a letter copied to the city.
Of course I have no objection to them laying the stones on the ground such that the are not leaning against our fence (never a good idea to lean things against a fence), or if they wanted to stick some edging fencing in the ground on their side of the fence. Or keep the rat on a leach/chain, or build a dog run…
I’m not casting any aspersions on the OP here, but this sounds like one of those silly, minor cases that can escalate to the level where the words ‘2nd Amendment!’ get thrown around.
I’d have been strongly inclined to leave the stones where they were, on the grounds that the solution seemed to be working and that any damage done to your fence by having stones leaning on it seems unlikely to be greater than the likely associated hassle of everybody pushing stones back and forth and snarling at each other; plus the dog very likely getting into your yard in the meantime because you pushed the stones away. Even if nobody starts throwing the stones.
They tried to fix the problem. They came at it wrong, sure. They shouldn’t touch your fence, sure (are you absolutely sure a valid survey shows it’s entirely on your side of the line? Sometimes people are wrong about that.) But this is beginning to remind me of the situation about right-of-way on the road: there are times when however true it is that it’s your right of way, it’s still a bad idea to insist on using it.
Yeah - when they moved in, they tried to tell us the fence was on their side. It isn’t - clear pipe in back and mark in front. We extended the fence to the front of our house - because of issues tiwh them. Got a survey and permit. Told the city we anticipated problems, and city said to call then and they’d come over during the install. Neighbors pulled out the survey flags. Day of install, neighbor started yapping and we called the city. Inspector looked over the site, simply told our workers to go ahead, and told the neighbors to not disturb.
So, no. After the shit they’ve directed our way, we’re not inclined to cut them a ton of slack.
I mean, put up your chicken wire on your side, then knock their stones off your fence, or leave the stones and send a letter saying you hope that’s a temporary measure while they pick up something that doesn’t have to lean on your fence. But knocking the stones over so now the dog can come into your yard again seems short sighted and comes across as petty.
If you don’t want to have contact with them, I don’t see why you’d do anything except put up a barrier on your side and continue ignoring them.
Quoting for it’s simple common sense. Nothing else is necessary or even worth doing, no notes or any other communication. Perhaps you or they will move some day. If not there are worse things to endure.
Another vote for leave the pavers in place until your get around to putting up chicken wire, and maybe then telling them you have the wire and you’d prefer they not rest pavers against your fence. Or maybe skipping that step.
But knocking the stones away when you haven’t first put the chicken wire back is a classic case of cutting off your nose to spite your face. You’re letting their dog in, which is what you were trying to prevent in the first place.
Not wanting to cut them slack is one thing; but you’re coming across as itching for a fight. Yeah, it’s your right of way – but if you pull out in front of that truck when you can see it coming, you’re contributing to the crash, even if the truck should have stopped.
The version I originally heard was something along the lines of “you can be right about having the right of way. Dead right.”
But even presuming that nobody in this case is that far off the wall – there are fights that can plausibly be won, and there are some that can’t. There is no good outcome that’s at all likely from getting any further into this one.
And there are some fights that are worth having anyway. This does not seem to me to be one of those fights.
I suspect we will end up with one of those ridiculous situations where next door neighbors have 2 parallel fences 6 or so inches apart. The kind of thing that advertises to anyone who notices, “Hmm - wonder what the history of bad blood led to THAT?!”
The back half of our fence is 4’ tall wide pickets. After prior issues with the neighbors, we extended it to the front of our house, 6’ tall, board-on-board. We are going to replace the back portion to make it all 6’ board-on-board, asking them to make the pickets as close to the ground as practicable.
Maybe when that is in, they will not feel the need to build their own fence, but if they wish to, that is their choice. Around our neighborhood many people are erecting those white vinyl fences - which we think unattractive. And if we wait until they put their fence in, installing ours could be more challenging. If we just have a 6’ fence that we like the look of along that entire line, we won’t have to look at whatever they erect - or whatever goes on in their yard.
Yeah - I agree with all of you that this is a ridiculous situation, and we could go about it differently. Right or wrong, we feel that the neighbors are bullying us - which we are tired of. Likely interferes with our decision-making.
No guarantee the chicken wire would’ve kept them from leaning the stones or erecting their own fence.
“Here lies the body of William Jay,
who died maintaining his right of way.
He was right, dead right, as he sped along,
but he’s just as dead as if he’d been wrong.”
