Cedarpines Park

I came home yesterday to a "Courtesy Abatement Letter - Habitual animal Noise" on my fence. Thinking my hens were bothering the neighbors, I called the number on the letter and was shocked to learn it was about my dogs!

What constitutes "habitual" barking? My dogs live indoors. They don't bark from neglect or boredom because they're never left outside alone. There is usually someone home and, when there isn't, they're inside the house. The only times my dogs bark is when someone is walking in front of our property. They really go nuts when an off-leash dog is at our fence. I think that's normal dog behavior. At night, they get a potty break and they're in their crates by 9:00, although once last week my husband let them out at 10:00 to scare away some raccoons that were by our back door. They were back in the house less than 10 minutes later.

What really bothers me is that we're pretty isolated. The house nearest us is vacant (and on the market). All our other neighbors are at least 100 feet away from our fence. So is the complaint from someone who mistakenly thinks the barking they hear comes from my dogs? Is it just a false report? Is it a realtor who thinks potential clients don't want to live next door to a pitbull and a rottwieler?

According to Animal Control I have no recourse. I just have to wait until someone complains again and I get cited and then I get to defend myself in court. And to think I could have bought a condo!

Animal Controls loves to scare you with the whole "citation/go to court" thang. To go to court, the complaining party will have to make themselves known (almost all complaints never get that far) and they need to prove that your dogs are indeed being noisy.

I don't understand why people can't first knock on their neighbours door and say "hi, I'm So-and-so and I live two doors down and your dogs are rather barky and keep me awake at night (or whatever). Could you please..."

I got that letter the first few months we had been up in CPP. I, unfortunately, left my doggies outside the one day I went down the hill and my backyard neighbour chose that day to have her trees trimmed....so my dogs barked at the stranger in the trees. Lesson learned!

Sound travels far at night. Your use of the dogs to deal with the racoons may have awakened an early sleeper and no one wants to be awakened by barking dogs. I agree with Willow about talking to offending neighbors first, but few do that for obvious reasons. How many of your neighbors have you ever spoken to? How many neighbors have moved away to be replaced by faceless changes of parked cars? I think many of us have little sense of neighborhood in the traditional vein.

Or perhaps it was the racoons that complained?

I had a neighbor years ago who complained to me and animal control that my dogs were barking all night long. They were causing her to have a nervous break down, and she said she couldn't sleep for days. I started to keep them in the house at night.

One day she came over, took a look around at my house and said "you got any equity in this house??" I said "no, but here is my number if my dogs bother you again"

A few nights later she called at 2:00 in the morning and told me my dogs were keeping her awake. I told her, "hey, my dogs are right here in my room with me" she said "oh, who's dogs are barking?"

I don't know, but Her dreams of owning my equity went right out the window....

You're right, Ron, it was probably the raccoons. Actually, we've met most of our neighbors. We just don't socialize. When we lived down the hill we used to have block parties, but there isn't really a block to speak of here.

Are there any community events in CPP?

Just water board meetings and whatever goes on at the VFW as far as I know. When I moved up here I was the only full time occupied house on my block except for old farts and lots of empty homes. Now I'm the old fart and there are few empty homes but few with any tenure.

I know all my neighbors and I like them, barking dogs and all.