Annoyed Resident Wonders If He's Wrong For Telling Neighbor's Noisy Dog To "Shut Up"

While people understood his frustration, what he did wasn't the best solution.

May

• Published in Interesting
• May 8, 2024

You are still in dreamland early in the morning. All of a sudden, you wake up to the noisy barking of your next-door neighbor's dog.

You're all pissed. It feels like your peace has been shattered, and the frustration starts to build up as you try to drown out the constant barking with your pillow.

As time passes, it becomes clear that this isn’t just a one-time thing. It's a regular occurrence.

You start to wonder how to handle this situation without causing unnecessary conflict with your neighbor. After all, you don't want to strain your relationship with someone who lives so close by.

So how would some people address this? One Quora user revealed what they did through this question they posted:

My neighbor’s dog woke me up barking this morning, and so I went outside and hollered real loud and said, “Shut the hell up!” Am I wrong for that?

But we all know that shouting curses at the neighbor's dog won't solve anything. Sure might make you feel better in the moment, but you'll probably hear the same noise the next morning.

Let us take a look at the best responses from Quora. And some might just be the answer that you're looking for.

What the original poster (OP) may not realize is that the barking could potentially be saving his life.

Many years ago I moved into a pub with my dog but not my hubby, he was still working another location. The first night there I had one of the big windows smashed just moments after I put my head on my pillow.

I got up and dealt with it. My biggest concern was the care home next door.

A few days later I received a phone call from next door complaining about my Big Girlie barking late in the evening, once I explained about the common fence we shared and what she was hearing could be on their side of the fence they never made another peep!

She was protecting them as well as me!! Miss my Girlie. 💔

It takes communicating with the neighbors and working with the community to solve the problem.

There is a very fine line now,

There was a dog that lived around the corner from me,I thought I would just get used to it (hahaha)

The dog was already barking at 0600 and I was just getting off my night shift,I took my dogs out for a run and walked past the offending dogs garden where this dog just looked so very sad,trying to get into the house,

We finished the walk and I put my ear plugs in and got comfy cosy,

They didn’t cancel all the noise but I could dose off wrote a note and posted through letter box, I didn’t put any information of my home just my name,

Hello, Is there anyway we could all get together (other neighbours who’d had enough) and see if anyone could help stop or less barking would have been great,

The owner of the dog was an older man and as deaf as a coot so would just take his hearing aid out and was not hearing the dog,While he was in hospital we all looked after the dog and made some changes for him,

We put up some fake ivy around the fence so the dog couldn’t see out of his garden and built the dog a small kennel and put a dog bed and towels in, The dog loved it and stopped barking after a couple of weeks

Working together and solving the problem went really well and we also took it in turns to walk his dog, Things could have quickly gone the wrong way,

So every thing is very calm now and the dog not barking wakes me up sometimes, You are entitled to have peace and quiet in your home and I’m sure something can be done,

I hope you get some soon

If this occurs regularly, the OP should talk to his neighbor about it.

Yes. What good did it do. Maybe there was a stranger around, could be a multitude of reasons.

Best thing to do is talk to the dog’s people when you’re cooled down. I have things that wake me up in the middle of the night like trucks, motorcycles, car racing etc.

I don’t go out and scream at them. Yes it ticks me off but yelling isn’t going to help.

How many neighbors did you wake up during your yelling session.

The OP can even try writing the neighbor a letter.

Absolutely not! We had a neighbor who threw her dog out everyday at 4:30 am sharp. Every. Damn. Day.

Dog howled, cried, yodeled and sounded like someone was beating the holy crap out of him, for an hour until they finally let him back in. One evening, I happened to be outside while they were having a dinner party or get together (they were 2 houses away) and I heard one of them call the dog by name, Stacy.

So now when the dog went nuts, I would poke my head out of the back bedroom window and scream “STACY SHUT UP!!” At the top of my lungs.

They would then bring un the dog, giving us a little bit of peace.

Between my schedule and my husband's, we only had one day to sleep in and that was Sunday. Didn't matter the day, they kicked out that poor dog.

One Sunday, I'd had enough and wrote a letter to the dog, from our rabbit's point of view. It explained how hard her mommy and papa worked and they really needed to have their sleepies and a grumpy, sleepy papa was no fun and wouldn't Stacy kindly put a sock in it and shut the f*ck up?

Never heard that dog again!

This user responded in kind — with his rock and heavy metal music.

I had a neighbor who bought a Siberian husky for their kids because she was “so cute”. When the puppy became an adult the kids no longer had any interest in the dog so it was sequestered in the back of the property (1/2 acre) and left to bark and whine and howl all day, all night.

It had no toys, no dog house, no water bowl forcing it to drink chlorinated pool water, and no human interaction. They walked the dog exactly 2 times in the 5 years they had her.

I was not able to sleep so I got so tired of asking and pleading for them to relinquish the dog to husky rescue but by the time they did the dog was mentally broken. YOU CAN’T ISOLATE A HUSKY AND EXPECT TO HAVE A WELL-BALANCED DOG.

I finally got through to them when I would go outside on my property as close to their bedroom window as possible and play punk rock/heavy metal as loud as possible and the worst part is when I would sing to it. They were Catholic and some of the songs were pretty raunchy.

They surrendered their dog after 3 weeks and moved to another state.

The dog probably barked louder.

Did the dog reply?

Just by looking at the responses, there are plenty of ways the OP can resolve this. If direct confrontation with the neighbor isn't what he wants, a friendly note or letter could suffice.

Another option is to engage other neighbors and collaborate as a team since they likely are also getting disturbed by all the noise.

At the end of the day, screaming like the way he did won't solve anything.

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