As a warning, I think this post might get long! I like to explain things at length, haha, so I apologize if I bore anyone.
My mom and I have a neighbor that is causing us a lot of anxiety.
For some background information before I explain the situation: My mom and I are both night owls. My mom works night shift as a nurse, from 7 pm to 7 am, and I've just always been a night person. I'm especially inclined to be doing things at night during the summer as it's hot out during the day, and I don't care for the heat at all. We have three dogs, a border collie and two corgis, who we absolutely adore. They are very friendly and sweet dogs.
We own an acre and keep to ourselves for the most part. At one point our neighbor (different neighbor) complained that our chickens were too close to their property line, so we moved the coop (it cost us over $500 to move, as it's a large in-ground structure that literally had to be disassembled and put back together again--basically like building it all over again). We want to fence our whole property but we can't afford it right now.
Our neighbor, let's call her SN for "scary neighbor", moved in to her mother's house after her mother moved to a convalescent home. At first we were on fine terms with her. My mom even gave her work housecleaning for us when SN was having financial difficulties. We helped care for her cat for free when she was gone, we gave her an extra litter box when she asked, and we have generally been pretty friendly towards her. We're not the sorts to treat a neighbor badly at all. I've heard her have yelling matches with people in her house that were loud enough that I could hear them in my house over the TV at least twice or thrice, but I stayed out of whatever that was.
Last July while I was in Japan, apparently my mom had my corgi Honey outside at 9 PM or so (SN had been outside until shortly before this all occurred), Honey barked some, and unexpectedly SN blew up about it. She claimed she was going to call her lawyer and sue us, said she hadn't slept in a year because of our dogs barking, yelled all kinds of expletives, and when my mom tried to come over the next day and talk to her about it she said she didn't want us on her property without permission.
Well, we didn't hear a word from her for a long time. Then she suddenly resorted to a different tactic regarding our dogs.
Now, like I said, we're night owls. We sometimes take the dogs out late, we try not to take them out later than 11 PM out of courtesy but sometimes the dogs need to go out later. When the dogs leave the house, they get excited and bark four or five times and then stop and go silent after that. I'm trying to get them to be quiet when I take them out, but they get excited about the skunk that hangs around and just going outside is exciting to them. Most of the time the dogs are in with us, they are not left outside on their own at all. Their barking when they go out is very brief, maybe a second or two, before they go quiet.
SN now screeches awful things and expletives at us whenever she hears the dogs past about 9 PM. She yells, slams doors, calls us the b word, and so on.
Now I realize that it isn't the nicest that we take our dogs out late at night. I know we're not entirely without blame. But like I said, the sound they make is very brief and not particularly loud. The dogs are on our property the whole time. Other people in the neighborhood leave dogs outside in fenced backyards all night and the dogs bark and bark all night at everything. Our dogs bark in one brief spurt for one or two seconds occasionally past 11 PM and then they're quiet. When she's in her yelling sprees she'll say things like "Some people sleep! Why do you do this every night?! Don't you ever sleep?!" and plenty of other more nasty things that are unrepeatable on BYC.
To be honest, my mom and I are rather scared of dealing with her. If SN sees me outside, even without dogs and when I'm just walking out to the chickens and paying her no mind, she'll go inside and slam her door loudly on the way. It makes me scared to take the dogs out at night even if I need to, even if it's as early as 9 PM and SN has her lights off. It makes me upset that I feel like she is controlling what we do with our own good dogs on our own property, and (as far as we know) not breaking any sort of ordinance or noise law or anything. I'm afraid she'll do something to retaliate, like harm our animals. I've heard of dogs getting poisoned over petty squabbles like this, and I would be inconsolable if something happened to any of my dogs or other animals. I've tried to just ignore her and go about what I'm doing, but I'm easily intimidated, so is my mom, and it's easier said than done.
Now, note that I am making an effort to try not to take the dogs out past 11 PM when possible, and I am also trying to train them to be quiet when they go out the door, but other than that I could use some advice or thoughts or stories of similar situations. I know we're not perfect neighbors, but we're certainly not the worst either... VERY brief spurts of barking not even once a night seems like a pretty small thing to get so angry about, and regardless of her being angry I really don't think she's going about resolving this issue in the right way. (To be honest her tactics almost make me want to host late-night parades and dance parties and invite some elephants on to the property.) I think she really should just get some earplugs if she's that sensitive to the noise and I've considered putting some in her mailbox, but I don't want to come off as passive-aggressive.
Feel free to state opinions but please be gentle with them! Like I said I'm a bit easily intimidated. Also if I didn't explain something well enough or made any typos, I'll clarify in the morning, it's currently almost 3:30 AM and it's time for bed for even this night owl.
My mom and I have a neighbor that is causing us a lot of anxiety.
We own an acre and keep to ourselves for the most part. At one point our neighbor (different neighbor) complained that our chickens were too close to their property line, so we moved the coop (it cost us over $500 to move, as it's a large in-ground structure that literally had to be disassembled and put back together again--basically like building it all over again). We want to fence our whole property but we can't afford it right now.
Our neighbor, let's call her SN for "scary neighbor", moved in to her mother's house after her mother moved to a convalescent home. At first we were on fine terms with her. My mom even gave her work housecleaning for us when SN was having financial difficulties. We helped care for her cat for free when she was gone, we gave her an extra litter box when she asked, and we have generally been pretty friendly towards her. We're not the sorts to treat a neighbor badly at all. I've heard her have yelling matches with people in her house that were loud enough that I could hear them in my house over the TV at least twice or thrice, but I stayed out of whatever that was.
Last July while I was in Japan, apparently my mom had my corgi Honey outside at 9 PM or so (SN had been outside until shortly before this all occurred), Honey barked some, and unexpectedly SN blew up about it. She claimed she was going to call her lawyer and sue us, said she hadn't slept in a year because of our dogs barking, yelled all kinds of expletives, and when my mom tried to come over the next day and talk to her about it she said she didn't want us on her property without permission.
Well, we didn't hear a word from her for a long time. Then she suddenly resorted to a different tactic regarding our dogs.
Now, like I said, we're night owls. We sometimes take the dogs out late, we try not to take them out later than 11 PM out of courtesy but sometimes the dogs need to go out later. When the dogs leave the house, they get excited and bark four or five times and then stop and go silent after that. I'm trying to get them to be quiet when I take them out, but they get excited about the skunk that hangs around and just going outside is exciting to them. Most of the time the dogs are in with us, they are not left outside on their own at all. Their barking when they go out is very brief, maybe a second or two, before they go quiet.
SN now screeches awful things and expletives at us whenever she hears the dogs past about 9 PM. She yells, slams doors, calls us the b word, and so on.
Now I realize that it isn't the nicest that we take our dogs out late at night. I know we're not entirely without blame. But like I said, the sound they make is very brief and not particularly loud. The dogs are on our property the whole time. Other people in the neighborhood leave dogs outside in fenced backyards all night and the dogs bark and bark all night at everything. Our dogs bark in one brief spurt for one or two seconds occasionally past 11 PM and then they're quiet. When she's in her yelling sprees she'll say things like "Some people sleep! Why do you do this every night?! Don't you ever sleep?!" and plenty of other more nasty things that are unrepeatable on BYC.
To be honest, my mom and I are rather scared of dealing with her. If SN sees me outside, even without dogs and when I'm just walking out to the chickens and paying her no mind, she'll go inside and slam her door loudly on the way. It makes me scared to take the dogs out at night even if I need to, even if it's as early as 9 PM and SN has her lights off. It makes me upset that I feel like she is controlling what we do with our own good dogs on our own property, and (as far as we know) not breaking any sort of ordinance or noise law or anything. I'm afraid she'll do something to retaliate, like harm our animals. I've heard of dogs getting poisoned over petty squabbles like this, and I would be inconsolable if something happened to any of my dogs or other animals. I've tried to just ignore her and go about what I'm doing, but I'm easily intimidated, so is my mom, and it's easier said than done.
Now, note that I am making an effort to try not to take the dogs out past 11 PM when possible, and I am also trying to train them to be quiet when they go out the door, but other than that I could use some advice or thoughts or stories of similar situations. I know we're not perfect neighbors, but we're certainly not the worst either... VERY brief spurts of barking not even once a night seems like a pretty small thing to get so angry about, and regardless of her being angry I really don't think she's going about resolving this issue in the right way. (To be honest her tactics almost make me want to host late-night parades and dance parties and invite some elephants on to the property.) I think she really should just get some earplugs if she's that sensitive to the noise and I've considered putting some in her mailbox, but I don't want to come off as passive-aggressive.
Feel free to state opinions but please be gentle with them! Like I said I'm a bit easily intimidated. Also if I didn't explain something well enough or made any typos, I'll clarify in the morning, it's currently almost 3:30 AM and it's time for bed for even this night owl.
