Recently purchased house, barking dog.

ED2

A good friend of mine has recently purchased a property.

When she was buying she noticed that there were quite a few dog owners around, she asked the vendors if there was any issue with barking and was told via the agent, that you rarely heard the dogs barking.

Since she's moved in, she can hear the dogs of one house barking about 4 hours per day. Weekends can be longer. They usually stop around 9pm but as the nights are getting longer they have been out barking later.

Barking dogs are a difficult one and I'm not sure what to advise her. She could certainly raise this with her solicitor, as technically the vendors should have declared it.

The advise you get is to initially go and talk to the dog owner.
My experience with people who have animals running around the house making very loud noise is that they are generally demented, and take great offense to someone pointing out that their beloved animal might be causing a disturbance by making noise that, in the case of some breeds of dogs, can be as loud as a jet engine.

They haven't bothered to train the dog to not bark up to adulthood, and the chances of them suddenly finding empathy for their neighbors is unlikely.

So your options at that point is to document the sound pollution and report it to the council. Best case result seems to be that the dog owner is warned, then fined, and if the problem persists the dog taken away. You're then living next to a very annoyed neighbor.

Basically, if you move in to a neighborhood with a barking dog, your rogered. Put up with it, fight the neighbors for it or go through the whole house moving process again.

So I'm not sure what I can advise my friend here. If anyone would like to chime in and offer suggestion, experience...

elsien

Barking dogs are not going to get taken away, not sure where you've had that from.Unless there is a high enough degree of neglect/cruelty to warrant their removal. The more likely scenario is that the owner would be served with a noise abatement notice and taken to court if they don't deal with it, if it was really that bad.
I'd still suggest a word with the neighbours as a starting point. If they're out, they may not realise the dog is being a nuisance until they are told. If they may have switched off and stopped noticing it.

ETA - sorry misread your post and thought you meant the dog would be removed fairly quickly. Whereas that would only happen after prosecution if the owner still did nothing to sort it,

LoopyLoops

Our neighbours took on a rescue dog, fairly elderly. They already had a dog. The new dog started barking which went on a fair while, so we spoke to the neighbour. They apologised and change things and the barking stopped. Simple. Actually the neighbour gave us a box of chocolates by way of apology for the noise. The other side has 2 dogs that do bark sometimes, usually because one of our cats is teasing them.

We did have a dog until last year. I can say neither side neighbours are demented and nor are we. Never taken offense about anyone saying something about the dog.

00ec25

ED2 wrote: »

So your options at that point is to document the sound pollution and report it to the council. Best case result seems to be that the dog owner is warned, then fined, and if the problem persists the dog taken away. You're then living next to a very annoyed neighb

wow, such misconceptions

gettingtheresometime

Sorry OP but I am certainly not demented nor would I start a physical fight if I got a knock in the door about my barking dog.

He's not left very often in his own but on the occasions he is, you'd swear his throat was being cut the noise he makes. Tonight was a typical example.

Perhaps you are the wrong person to advise your friend, as you clearly have pre-formed ideas about such owners

ED2

LoopyLoops wrote: »

Our neighbours took on a rescue dog, fairly elderly. They already had a dog. The new dog started barking which went on a fair while, so we spoke to the neighbour. They apologised and change things and the barking stopped. Simple. Actually the neighbour gave us a box of chocolates by way of apology for the noise. The other side has 2 dogs that do bark sometimes, usually because one of our cats is teasing them.

We did have a dog until last year. I can say neither side neighbours are demented and nor are we. Never taken offense about anyone saying something about the dog.

Good to know that both you and your neighbor are considerate people.

But I feel its fair to say that if a dog owner is allowing their animal to make a loud noise that is potentially preventing other people from having a happy life, they are generally not considerate and empathetic people.

If I were to turn up my music to volumes that prevented my neighbor from relaxing after a hard days work, I wouldn't be a good neighbor. Surely, the same applies with allowing incessant barking.

Perhaps bringing it to their awareness would solve the issue, but as a person living alone my friend will run the risk of confrontation, because the neighbor couldn't work out that very loud noises disturb other people. I'm sorry, but there must be something wrong with them to not be aware of that, or care about it.

Cloth_of_Gold

I don't think your friend should assume her neighbours are 'demented'. Why doesn't she invite them over and see what they're like and try to develop friendly relations with them and then politely raise the issue. They perhaps don't realise the dog is barking if they're out or that the noise can be heard in your friend's house. I really think trying to resolve it with them in a friendly way is far preferable to going straight to he council as that way you risk getting their backs up unnecessarily as they might be perfectly nice and reasonable people.

ED2

gettingtheresometime wrote: »

Sorry OP but I am certainly not demented nor would I start a physical fight if I got a knock in the door about my barking dog.

He's not left very often in his own but on the occasions he is, you'd swear his throat was being cut the noise he makes. Tonight was a typical example.

Perhaps you are the wrong person to advise your friend, as you clearly have pre-formed ideas about such owners

I have two dogs living next to me, they bark very rarely whether they are alone or not. They are regularly in the garden next to me and I hardly ever hear them. My friend has a terrier, he also never barks. My friend said that he simply trained the dog not to incessantly bark.

If your concerned about disturbing other people, and you should be if your dog is barking as you put it, like its throat has been cut, perhaps you could get advise on how to train your dog.

As I replied to another poster, if I started blasting loud music from the other side of your bedroom wall I wouldn't be very considerate. I shouldn't have to wait until someone drags themselves out of their bed at night, and asks me to turn it down. Same gos for your dog.
But its your dog and your going to get defensive about that, which proves my point.

ED2

Its the action I recommend and do myself Cloth, always try and sort things out amicably. The best way to be.
Sometimes in life, people don't feel the same way unfortunately.

G_M

Is this thread a wind up?

She could certainly raise this with her solicitor, as technically the vendors should have declared it.

:eek:

Surely your friend noticed the dogs when she was reviewing the area? If they bark for 4 hours a day they must have been barking on one of those visits......

Davesnave

gettingtheresometime wrote: »

Perhaps you are the wrong person to advise your friend, as you clearly have pre-formed ideas about such owners

I don't have any 'pre-formed' idea about dog owners who let their dogs bark outside for 4 hours or more, disrupting the peace that neighbours should be able to to enjoy on their own property; it's just anti-social behaviour.

I have a neighbour who fits the stereotype well, although in his case there is also a degree of f e c k lessness; there being no concept of how a dog might be trained, or what sort of breed might cope better with being abandoned in a cage with nothing to do.

Fortunately for me, but not the dog, my neighbour came into money a few years ago. So now, instead of going out to work and leaving the dog barking, he or his wife are usually at home, doing whatever those with money and little imagination do. As a result, there is silence, because the dog's locked-away in a dark shed. After all, they don't want to listen to it, do they?

The dog comes out forthe odd 20 minute bark now and again, and very occasionally, it gets the run of the garden, when it never barks, because it's not then fearful or bored.

Now, all this is quite different from another neighbour, whose dog cannot bear separation. It sounds like your dog, in that it cries and howls inconsolably until she returns; a proper drama queen! For that reason, its owner never leaves it for more than about an hour, and all of us nearby understand what's happening when it kicks-off.

So, I'm sure most of us get it that there's not just one kind of barking dog or dog owner, and it's pretty straightforward to determine when the noise becomes so frequent and long-term that it's unreasonable.

The problem is, too often, there's is little that can be done about it, or about the sort of mistreatment I have described.