Will Someone. Please. Shut. That. Dog. UP!

The BBQ Pit
21

I’m in a midcity suburb. It’s pretty standard etiquette at least around here that if your dog won’t reliably shut up at night, it’s your responsibility to keep it indoors. In fact, I can’t think of any of my neighbors (within earshot) that keep their dogs outdoors all night for that reason. They might get a possum or raccoon in the yard that gets them riled in the middle of the night or something.

You could just make a noise complaint to your city as recommended, but I feel comfortable enough in this neighborhood that I’d ask around to find out if anyone had a new dog or someone visiting if I was in the OP’s situation. I see most of my neighbors with dogs out when I’m walking my own dog.

Oh, and answering the OP’s rant… they very possibly may not be at home and have left the animal in the backyard, thinking only to avoid it tearing up their house and not caring that it’s keeping up the neighborhood with its barking. They may sleep drunk or sleep with earplugs and keep the animal in the backyard because it isn’t housebroken. I could come up with a million suppositions as to why. A lot of people just don’t give a shit.

22

Yes, but are they fat?

23

No.

They do aerobics.

24

Ah, you must have shitty floor construction in your building.

25

Please do not do this again. No warning issued.

26

When you do find out who owns the dog, you can do what I did once. Called the owner every time the dog started barking, no matter what time it was, and told them “your dog is barking”. After the third middle of the night call, they got the hint.

27

My sympathies, Claire. At least my neighbor’s rooster only crows at dawn and when the security lights come on.

28

My mexican neighbors across the street live in a 1950’s cinderblock house. At least once a week they enjoy their spanish oompa-pa music at noon when I’m trying to sleep. They crank it up so high that they have no choice but to open their front door to let the sound out. It echos off the adjacent houses it’s so loud. At first I thought it was because the would work on their POS cars in the street, but now they don’t even do that.

It’s been for sale since I moved in, but I doubt anyone would buy it since it has literally NO backyard, and it’s cinderblock.

29

Mexican neighbors listening to Spanish ooom-pah music… they certainly are international, aren’t they?

Are you talking about mariachi music or perhaps reggaeton?

More importantly, was there dog barking?

It’s really rude of them to do that at noon. They should know some of their norte Americano neighbors will be lolling in bed while they are out working on their cars. So inconsiderate of them.

30

My guess would be Norteño, which certainly sounds close enough to “oom-pah” music for this gal’s ears (grew up in a heavily Germanic and Polish-settled area), features accordions, and was influenced by German immigrants. I had neighbors at my previous apartment who’d blare it out of their car stereos.

31

So it’s *Mexican * oompah music, cool. :wink:

32

There is a rental next door to my house and it once housed a set of renters who had a dog but ignored it completely. They left it chained to a tree in the backyard 24/7.

One fine Saturday morning about 7:30, I heard the dreaded barkbarkbark pause barkbarkbark pause barkbarkbark pause Of course my initial reaction was to call the cops, Animal Control, and the National Guard, but as I was making my coffee, gazing out my kitchen window, into the neighbor’s yard, it became immediately apparent to me that the dog was in great distress. It had wound the chain around the tree and itself one too many times and was pinned to the tree. Couldn’t move, couldn’t eat, couldn’t drink, couldn’t get to its little doggie condo.

Horrified, I march next door, barefoot and still wearing pajamas, and bang on the door. Sleepy neighbor answers. I ask if they realize their dog has been barking for about three hours straight. Neighbor claims it’s not her dog, but the roommate’s. I wanted to say, “I don’t care who claims to be the owner, but are you deaf?” I gave her a hard stare and asked if she could hear the barking. (The poor dog was barking at that very moment.) She had no choice but to admit that, now that she had the door open and was standing outside, she could, indeed, hear the dog barking.

She tells me she’ll take care of the dog, and I go back to my house and watch from my kitchen window, because my next action was very much going to be a phone call to Animal Control to report these people for abuse. I watched her step outside, assess the situation, realize the dog was in real, actual trouble, and then she untangled him from his chain. I do not know if he was fed or watered, ever. (I couldn’t see any bowls outside and I never saw anyone walking the dog, playing with it, petting it, or feeding it. The dog never went in and never ran loose around the yard… he was sentenced to be chained to a tree. I would bark my furry ass off too, if I was chained to a tree all day and all night. Wouldn’t you?)

The sad ending to this story is, I heard the dog barking another time, but eventually he stopped. I figured the humans had come outside and tended to it. The next morning, I was on my back porch and heard my neighbor open her door, and give that gasp/scream thing you do when you see something horrifying has gone down in your backyard. I can only assume the dog had managed to hang itself or strangle itself because I never heard it bark again and didn’t see it in the yard after I heard the gasp/scream.

So my point is, it could very well be the case that there is something terrible going on for a dog like that, and a polite inquiry at the home of the humans might be in order.

And, for the record, I am far more disturbed by the day care center behind my house. It’s not the children playing and screaming that bugs me, although the screaming does work one’s nerves. It’s the adults who work there and think screaming at children = discipline. I hate those ladies. I feel sorry for every kid who has to stay there.

33

I’ve read that a ball of hamburger packed around a core of rat poison and tossed over the fence in the dead of night could potentially solve that problem in short order; not that I’d ever consider doing —or encouraging another to do— anything so dispicable and/or illegal, however effective the tactic may actually be.

34

Cute. But read in conjuntion with your post #16 and my post #25, this is still encouraging illegal activity. Your claim that you’d “never consider encouraging” it is not credible–you aready did in post #16. I’m issuing you a warning: Do not do this again.

**
Gfactor**
Pit Moderator

35

It’s a shame we can’t issue Decent Human Being warnings in the Pit, because you need one.

36

I guess this is the best place to vent.
I live next door to a young Middle Eastern couple. When they first moved in she used to babysit several young children.
There’s was one kid in particular that would scream bloody murder several times during the day. I never saw the kids because they were always inside, but I figured this kid must be 6 or 7 years old. The way that this kid sounded, I thought maybe he/ she was mentally ill or something. This kid would screaming incoherently at the top of their lungs for 20-30 seconds at a time provoked by nothing.
It would be nice and quiet, then a piercing AAAYYYEEEEAAAHHAHHH for 30 seconds making me jump out of my skin.
I was talking to the husband and asked if one of the kids his wife babysat had some kind of mental issue and told him about the weird and crazy screaming all day. He smirked at me kind of funny and never replied. Weird.
I realized after they lved their awhile longer that it was his wife who was the crazy screamer and he was just as bad as her. If I didn’t know any better I would think someone was getting murdered there on a nightly basis.
They scream and fight almost every night and the bad thing is their living room is next to my bedroom and I need to be up at 4:30am for work.
Due to other reasons, I don’t speak with this neighbor anymore and they are unreasonable people. I feel if I called the police on them, they would kill one of my pets or something. They are a bit nutty and I believe you don’t mess with crazy.
I’m just biding my time until this economy gets better so I can at least break even on my house when I sell it.

37

Banda!

38

I like dogs, I really do. It has been several years since the last of my dogs had to be put down due to age and illness, yet I still miss them.

But by god, if I had the money, I would biuy a piece of land big enough that I would never have to hear another persons dog barking ever again.

I have it much better than most of the posters here. I have 4.5 acres of land “in the country”, just outside of San Antonio, but even that is not a sufficient buffer from a big dog that barks for hours on end all night. It’s hard to tell out here just whose dog is barking, but the owner doesn’t seem to be bothered by it.

I don’t know how many times my own dogs would “tree” something in my yard, then start barking at it. Usually it was a neighbors cat, but my brave little dogs were very territorial and didn’t suffer cat-trespass lightly. The only way to quiet them down was to individually pick up each one, put them in their pen inside the garage, then wait a while until the cat decided to leave. I kept the dogs in the garage at night to keep them from chasing down every deer, possum, skunk, racoon, porcupine, fox, etc. that roamed around at night. If my dogs barked for very long, then I knew something was wrong, and I went to find out what was happening and to get them quiet.

But quite a few people seem oblivious to the constant loud barking of their own dog just outside their house, whereas I am bothered by it from blocks away. I have neighbors on one side that keep their dogs penned up part of the day. Apparently, the dogs have nothing to do but look over directly at my house, past and through the trunks of dozens of trees, across over 300 feet or property, and bark at me once I come around the corner of my house on the way to my workshop. I can’t see them, but they can sure see me. This wouldn’t be so bad if it was a short-term deal, but for an hour or so after I am in my shop and out of sight, them continue to bark anyway.

I sympathize with the OP and others who are afflicted with incessant dog barking.

Oh, as for the Mexican polka oompah music; I couldn’t tell you what it is called, but in this part of the country, it is required boom-box play at most construction sites. I am no expert, but there seems to basically be four songs - 1) male solo singer, 2) multiple male singers, 3) solo female singer, 4) one with trumpets. All have a lively beat, a tuba oomping in the background, and an acchordion solo in the middle. I don’t know if they are the same four songs in rotation or it just seems that way. There was a two-year period here where there was a lot of new home construction in the area and on almost any workday, between 10am and 5pm, I couldn’t step outside and hear it wafting on the breeze from some direction.

39

You’re really quite the dumbass, aren’t you?

40

Radio talk show host Adam Carolla used to complain about that type of oompah pah Mexican music blaring from construction sites in southern California. He called it Ranchero music.