My very first HOA citation - Barking dogs.

mojojoeo

Super!

So I get to 'address an issue' that is being ambiguously presented to me as "dogs barking are a nuisance." No complaintant will be given either, which is just suck because that would make it very simple. As simple as a conversation. But what eves.

Any advice on how to handle the situation not resulting in murder? << I kid, we really want whichever neighbor it is to feel better about the issue. >>

Any advice on stopping dogs from barking when I'm not there? When I am there they just sleep mostly. (my guess is the issues is when we are not home.)

My only thoughts were more walks, as winter has made us and therefore the dogs a lil sedentary. Tired dogs sleep all day.

Xaquin

try a bark collar.

no offense, but dogs barking in close proximity are REALLY REALLY annoying.

where I live I have 5 other yards bordering mine. 3 of them have a total of 4 dogs. 2 of them are nice and never bark, but unfortunately, they inadvertently piss off the other two dogs. who never EVER stop barking. Which may be ok it they weren't located directly outside my 6 month olds window. Poor kid hasn't had a decent nap since he was in the womb.

no amount of talking to or HOA complaints or police has made a difference

sorry I kind of vented on you there.

buy a bark collar. I think they're around $30 or so

Regina Fong

They also sell wall plug-in units that emit an annoying pitch sound whenever your dog barks which is supposed to accomplish the same thing.

Don't use either that or the collar if other neighbors have dogs that may bark though, it would be awful for your dogs to start getting zapped because someone else's dog is barking.

As for the anonymous complaint, well yes that sucks and is very cowardly, but the fact that it was made anonymously means that the person has zero interest in discussing it with you personally, they just want the barking to stop.

Thanatos

I'm pretty sure a bark collar won't go off unless it's the dog wearing it that's barking.

Figgy

Exercise is likely the answer here. Your dogs are barking all day because they're home alone, and they're bored as fuck. They bark all day long, and when you get home, they sleep because they're tired from barking all day long.

Take them out every night. Play with them more.

Do they have lots of toys in the house for when they're home alone?

Darkewolfe

It's totally your responsibility to not have your dog barking all the goddamn time when you're not at home, and it's a reasonable complaint for a neighbor. Dog training schools of thought usually place excessive barking while you're not at home on a few things:

1. Dog is bored. Exercise the dog more, give the dog something to do while you're gone all day. If your dog is confined to a limited space for 10 hours while you're at work, he may take up barking just to have something to do.

2. Don't encourage your dog to bark. Don't let your dog get your attention with barking, don't use it as a way for the dog to indicate that he wants something (to be let in, for instance), and don't ever reward a barking dog with attention. (Dog barks at trash man. You immediately rush to dog and say, "There there, it's just a trash man, calm down, Scruffy. You've reinforced the barking behavior.)

3. Don't baby your dog. Don't immediately pet your dog and love on him the second you get home as he excitedly bounds toward you, possibly barking, looking as though he has spent the day in miserable agony because you weren't there. This trains your dog to think that it really does suck when he doesn't have you at home, and reinforces a lot of the above problem behaviors.

Hevach

Those collars only go so far. If the dog is bored and underexercised, a lot of them will just bark right through it, my neighbor's dogs are on those things, and when left alone it'll slow them down at first, but after an hour or two they just keep barking until they eventually switch over to a piteous howling that makes me wish they'd bark more. They're meant to stop a generally quiet dog that just occasionally gets excited about the mailman or sees a squirrel he can't reach, not constant problem barking.

Figgy and Darkwolfe have good advice: get to the root of the problem.

tofu

Figgy wrote: »

Exercise is likely the answer here. Your dogs are barking all day because they're home alone, and they're bored as fuck. They bark all day long, and when you get home, they sleep because they're tired from barking all day long.

Take them out every night. Play with them more.

Do they have lots of toys in the house for when they're home alone?

Yep

Obviously every dog has different energy levels, you have to find out where yours are and satisfy them

JihadJesus

In my opinion, there are two problems: your dog is barking, and you live somewhere with a homeowner's association. Step 1 is to train your dog. Step 1b is to get the hell out of anywhere with a homeowners association if at all possible.

Dunadan019

as corny as it sounds, have you tried turning on the TV or radio so there is noise in the house and they don't think you're gone.

if you want to go real hightech you could record a bunch of audio files of your voice saying various things and play them at different times during the time you were gone as well.

then you could set up a surround sound system in every room and use individual channels to make it appear like you're in one corner or another of your entire house (multiple computers required).

but all awesome but infeasible ideas aside, you should probably first record your house when you're away so you can make sure that the dogs are barking and its not just some bitchy neighbor reporting your dogs for barking when they walk their dog by.

mojojoeo

Firstly- I so get noise complaints; I have lived with many noise issues and it sucks. So I really want this fixed. What I hate is, I lived in apartment complexes for like 6 years and had no complaints ever. So my dogs finally get their own yard and have become bums.

And Hoa's are just peachy. 2 times a year they drive through and just write citations that make no sense. A yard gets cited- the neighbors yard is 2x worse. crap like that.

Back to the issue, I called and pushed the HOA for more info and figured the entire issue out. Apparently my dogs, when out, just bark the whole time since about 2 weeks ago when a new neighbor moved in 3 houses down. Seems like college renters and they are in the yard alot so my dogs bark. And bark alot, Across the assumed complainants yard @ about 930 when they are let out. Kids go to sleep at that time so yeah. Whoops.

So when I put them out I go with, which calms them down to the point they don't bark. Problem solved.

I also used a baby gate to cut them off from peering out the front windows at people passing.

I skyped in during the day to a temporary 'dog cam/mic' most of yesterday and this morning- Lots of sleeping. Border collie mix and jack russel sprawled out. Looks like this-

The occasional bark. I don't think the walls are that thin that they can hear that from their house. Our houses are laid out such that the dogs are in the middle of ours. I am 99% sure its the barking across their yard at night.

The Tv on sounds great but I cut cable in favor of hulu/netflix so constant noise is an issue. Oh and one of the dogs is Deaf from birth.

I think its covered....

Xaquin

good man

I wish our neighbors were more like you