Neighbor problems... Getting rather frustrated. :(

[sunflowerenvy]

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are you working your guys to hard they might get tired...............

 

[debilorrah]

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are you working your guys to hard they might get tired...............

HAHAHA!!! Actually, I have two active roos, the silkie roo, Swiffer, just stands there and crows constantly. Of course he is too small for the neighbors to hear. He THINKS he is a big bad Roo. HAHAHA!

 

[TigerLilly]

I can not take sides here because I've been on both sides of the noise issue with neighbors--and I live on almost 2 acres.
Speaking from experience & learning our local ordinances the hard way, SN has a right to a peaceful environment--but you need to know YOUR local noise ordinances! I've seen others mention it, but no mention from the OP if it's been checked.

My SN story, short & sweet:
Old fart that hates life & everyone in the world (he's been heard yelling & cursing at his senile b-i-l), lives up near the road on the right side of his property; my house is at the back end of my property. I have 3 boys who like anything with wheels & a motor (one monkied with the lawn mower & 'souped it up.'). This means at least one dirt bike or 4 wheeler at any given time. Told boys they could make a dirt track around the inside of the fully fenced property. One AFTERNOON a deputy shows up to tell me someone has complained about the noise. Seriously? In the middle of the day? Bottom line was that if it interferred with the quality of life for someone else, the dirt bike had to be put up. I started to argue with the deputy, but know better, so I shut up--don't think I wasn't wanting an air horn...

The other side of the noise problem:
Neighbor on the other side had 3 or 4 dogs, one of which was left outside all the time. It would bark & bark & bark & bark. I tried being neighborly about it, casually mentioning it a couple of times. Nothing was done. After a solid week & a half of this...getting no sleep, working a fulltime job, raising 3 boys & snapping at anyone who even looked at me crooked...(ex) husband finally catches the neighbor at the fence & gives them holy he!! about what HE'S having to deal with because I'M not getting any sleep. That worked for a couple of weeks. I got to the point that I turned on a window fan so I couldn't hear ANYthing outside of my room & life was good.

Moral of the stories?
#1 You just cant make some people happy, no matter what you do or how hard you try (until they grew up & moved out, he found fault with EVERYthing they did. They've been out of the house now for at least 5 years & he complained about some gunfire he heard recently--blamed it on MY BOYS!)
#2 You can't expect other people to make your life happy; YOU have to take responsibility for that yourself. I bought earplugs & sleep masks when I started working 12 hours on a night shift & now I dont care WHO is doing WHAT or how LOUD they do it! I'm a happy camper, and getting plenty of sleep.

Sorry this turned out to be longer than I thought...I can get wordier than this!

 

[SilverPhoenix]

Still enjoying reading the responses even when they do get a bit off-topic! That's all right.

Of course it's always a hot issue and one worth discussing--what are the rights of one person versus their neighbors'? It seems like everyone has a different answer. I think the correct answer is somewhere between the extremes of doing whatever one wants with no consideration of the quality of life of the neighbors, and centering one's life around the schedule of the neighbors. It's an interesting topic regardless of whether it relates directly to my issue or not.

To be honest, I think some of you are jumping to conclusions about the severity of the noise I'm talking about. It's not every night and it's one or VERY rarely two brief (one to two seconds) bouts of barking if I take them out late at all. It is not an issue of constant noise or my mom or I doing anything else disruptive at night, because we really are quiet at night aside from the dogs going out not even every night. If it was an issue of the dogs being out and barking for long periods of time at night this would be a very one-sided issue--in favor of SN! I am not someone who thinks we should have a right to just do whatever, whenever, no matter what the effect on the neighbors. I like peace and quiet, too, though noise doesn't bother me nearly as much as it does SN. If something loud is going on in the neighborhood early in the morning when I'm sleeping, I just close the windows, turn on the fan or TV, or put in earplugs. Both SN and I live on a major road that has construction going on fairly often, motorcycles going by, ambulances, and so on, so it's not like the dogs are the only noise at all. I'm lucky enough to be a heavy sleeper, though.

The only thing I left out was that on rare occasion (maybe once every few months) the dogs will wander over to her yard until I realize they're over there and call them back over. Like I said we can't afford a fence and occasionally I'll get distracted by the chickens and they'll sneak off in search of food to scrounge. I can perfectly understand why she would be upset about that, however (even though her mother had a dog who practically lived at our house--much to our inconvenience, as a dog we had at the time was dog aggressive and didn't take kindly to him hanging around), and I've very nearly eliminated that issue. They now hardly wander over there at all, almost never, and have gotten better and better about hanging around on the property. I don't want them going over there, or off the property at all, either. Other than that I can't think of anything else that would upset or annoy her--nothing!

We're not being bad or loud neighbors otherwise... We keep to ourselves and we're pretty quiet.

RE: The issue of mental illness, I don't think I have enough information to say that myself. I do think I can fairly say she has anger management problems, however, as we're not the only people she screeches obscenities at. Like I said in the original post, I've heard her screaming at people in her house before, and the other day at her yard sale she was screaming at someone about something else. I don't think the other neighbors have issues with her because they're all too far away to have to deal with her. She is good friends with the people who complained about our chicken coop, though, and I'm sure they complain about us together.

I do plan on looking up the noise ordinances in our county and seeing what they are and whether we're breaking them.

For now I'm trying to take them out in the fenced backyard instead of the front yard. They don't tend to bark as much in the fenced backyard, but it is annoying that they don't seem to want to go to the bathroom out there. Maybe if I take them out more frequently in that yard at night and give them only that option they'll get the message and we won't have to deal with SN screaming at all and won't wake her up.

 

[thaiturkey]

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You now say that your dogs go onto the neighbour's land. If she doesn't like your animals it's little wonder that she's hacked off with you. A brief bout of barking from a couple of dogs in the evening can, by the way, lead to someone losing hours of sleep if she is awakened by it.

Your statement that there are noises outside in the early morning isn't relevant. You work anti-social hours so you have to expect that.

Have you tried taking your dogs for a walk in the evening as I suggested previously? They are in the habit of doing what dogs need to do on your land so you will have to break that habit and teach them a new one.

 

[SilverPhoenix]

Oh, yes, I certainly agree that she has a right to be angry that the dogs go on her property. That is, like I said, a very rare occurrence indeed, though, and more-or-less a solved problem.

I do take them for walks in the evening frequently, actually. But they still sometimes need to go out at what you call "anti-social" hours.

I think I have the problem mostly solved, hopefully, because they are being quiet when I take them out in the back. They're just going to have to get used to going in the backyard.

 

[chicksbestfriend]

Not hearing both sides of the story, its really hard for me to take sides either way with the situation. First, I would like to extend an apology to both you and your neighbor, I am sorry for the anxieties your neighbor is causing you and your mother and second, I am sorry for the neighbor who is feeling stressed out/angry with the your dogs barking. When I lived in the city almost 20 yrs ago, I had one neighbor that use to get upset when my children would be running around inside my house, watching TV and laughing, all in fun. Everytime they would do this, she would yell across the fence at me to shut the kids up, slam her door and slam all her windows shut, and the scary thing was, she was a school teacher! Personally, I just ignored her behavior, as the kids were not making excessive noise and definitely couldnt be rated as a nuisance. (Mind you, we were always on good terms, I helped her with the interior decorating of her house and exterior landscaping to her home, we watched each other kids, etc and not once did I bring up her window and door slamming behaviors and neither did she). Well, the neighbor later had twins, that cried and screamed all day and night long. I could hear it, it wasnt really bothersome, and at times, I so badly wanted to tell her to shut the babies up to give her a taste of her own medicine. I bit my tongue for the longest time and one day the babies were crying and screaming, I went around and slammed all the doors and windows, just as she did to my children when they were having fun. Guess what? Never heard another word out of her about the kids making noise and she stopped slamming the doors and windows, and we continued to be neighborly. I could never figure out why the sounds of her babies crying and screaming didnt upset her at all but yet the joy and laughter coming from my kids would lead her into a slamming rage! Several years later, she went through a bitter divorce, they sold the house, never to be heard of again. Most of the time, there are deeper underlying issues that trigger people to react certain ways towards certain people and to certain circumstances and we will never understand why. I decided that her anger wasnt directed towards me and the kids, she was miserable in her marriage and probably resented the fact that we were always happy and she wasnt. Ironically, our new neighbors were also teachers, but childless. They use to always tell me how they welcomed the sound of laughter coming out of my home!

I am now dealing with a widowed senior gentleman who lives on an acre adjacent to mine. The past 7 yrs., we have done everything possibly to assure that what ever we got going on within our property doesnt affect/bother any of our neighbors and him. We have been sensitive of his aging needs when making accomodations to our property the best we could. We recently put a privacy fence around our property to allow continued airflow through to his property and to assure safety of all our animals, (most of the lots are not fenced in at all). Close to the fence line bordering his property, yet only on my property, I planted a grove of banana trees which reach up over the fence. There is no mess from the trees landing on his side of the fence ever. Each day, he goes along the fence with his hoe, reaches up to the leaves and then bends them back through the fence to my side! We have also put small meshed wiring all along the bottom of the fence to prevent chickens, feathers, etc from going in to his property. Last week, we had severe winds and some duck feathers ended up in his yard and he was yelling, " I dont own ducks, why do I have a duck feather on my land?" The list goes on and on. My point being, sometimes, no matter what we do in life, we cannot please all the people all the time, even when we are doing the best that we can. For some people, a few barks from a dog late at night isnt even noticed, but for others, sends them into a psychic scream. A dog barking, ducks quacking, chickens cackling and crowing, pigs squealing, its all music to my ears.

Want to be neighbors?

 

[SilverPhoenix]

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I wish! We would make good neighbors.

 

[chicksbestfriend]

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I wish! We would make good neighbors.

Great! There is an empty one acre lot behind mine!

 

[SilverPhoenix]

Oh wow, and you're in Maui! Count me in!

Haha, if only~!