Neighbours dog barking

staffie1

Get more evidence from a noise activated recorder, which you can leave set to automate the recording of the nuisance for you. The sound of the barking will add weight to your evidence.

SensibleSarah

I do really empathise with you OP. I live in a terraced house and have a Romanian rescue, as well as another large UK rescue dog. When he first arrived, he was reactive to anything that passed by the front window - so I got some privacy film for the window and that problem was immediately solved. He also used to 'alert bark' at noises in the street, neighbours banging their wheelie bin lids, kids in the garden next door etc - but that thankfully tailed off after a few months as he settled and got used to the new and noisy environment. He'll still bark when someone knocks at the door, and the occasional bark at night if he hears something he thinks is suspicious (like when someone broke into next door's van), but he's certainly not a noisy dog now. I use a camera to check in on the dogs when I'm out and they're not noisy then either, but it was a different story in the early months. I repeatedly apologised to my neighbours, but all of them have dogs too, so they were very understanding.

A lot of Romanian rescues specifically have niche guardian breeds in their genetic make-up, typically livestock guardian types, so are naturally more inclined to bark first and think later as it's literally what they were bred for and is one of their main ways of communiating - especially just a few months into a UK home in a built up area. Their instincts are typically much closer to the surface than most of the UK dogs we're used to, so it's not as simple a matter as 'training them out of it' - but that's very little comfort if it's not your dog and the noise seems to be pretty constant, with your neighbours seemingly not doing anything to try and sort it out or minimise it. 

My next door neighbours currently have a large breed pup, she's about 6-7 months old now. She's never left alone in the house (one of her owners is housebound), but is often shut in a room by herself and she is extremely noisy. They just leave her to 'cry it out' for hours at a time, which isn't the most pleasant for me or the neighbours on the other side and isn't something I would do with my dogs.

It seems to me like keeping the noise diary is the best way forward at the moment. I know that if a neighbour showed me that about my dogs barking, I'd be mortified and would do everything possible to resolve it.