The neighbours from hell
Posted by Fiona Nevile in Cottage tales, Min Pin dogs | 13 comments
The stocky man outside the front door looked a bit embarrassed. I assumed that he was going to offer to prune my trees or tarmac the drive. With a sweep of his hand he explained that he was a neighbour. He didn’t give his name. As The Contessa and Inca bawled at him from the safety of the sitting room window he let rip.
He jabbed a finger in the direction of the roaring dogs behind the steamy window.
“Those are the reason why I have come round.”
He observed me closely and enunciated clearly.
“Every time I go into my garden they yap. I open the shed door they yap. They ruined the barbecue that we had last summer. Our guests said,
“How can you cope with this?”
I know that they are a yappy breed but please do something about them. Our dog doesn’t bark. They’re driving me nuts. Everyone agrees with me. They are a nightmare. I can’t even strim in peace. It’s just yap, yap, yap…” He went on and on, with a much stronger bark, for a good ten minutes.
I let the rant wash over me. I hadn’t brushed my hair, was wearing outrageous pyjamas and hadn’t even started to think about breakfast. I was also containing our oldest Min Pin, Dr Quito. Who had sensed danger and was snarling from behind my slippers.
“Why there’s even another one there!”
Here was the unseen Bank Manager that Inca (our youngest and most territorial dog) has taken a real aversion to. Our garden backs onto the gardens of six houses. He moved into one last year. We’ve never had a complaint from anyone before.
“I came round last week and there was no one home! I realised that the dogs have access to the garden when you are out. They have to be shut indoors.”
When I nodded he softened a bit.
“I have heard you calling them in when they’re yapping.”
Of course he had, there is nothing worse than a yapping dog. Our dogs have access to the garden through a cat flap. In summer an open back door, when we are at home. As he strode down the drive I realised that we needed to do something about this fast, before it was too late. The set of his neck indicated extensive petitions and complaints to the police.
Danny and I discussed the options. “I’m amazed that he didn’t mention the chickens and guinea fowl.”
From the depths of the garden we heard Cloud’s piercing, repetitive call.
“Come home, come home, come home, come home… Come home, come home, come home, come home…”
The main culprit is Inca who is six years younger than the next dog. She loves a good bark. She plays for hours on her own with rings and balls but often gets bored and then she patrols the fences looking for intruders. Following the BM’s visit we had a yap free day. Had the dogs understood our mutters of ASBO and the possibility of being “put down”?
We decided to give the younger dogs a hearty walk each morning. Dogs will be locked in the cottage when we are both out and we’ve organised a friend to let them out for a 10 minute breather at midday. This morning I searched the barn for the pack of Training Pads as there are bound to be a few accidents and these are a great way of containing the mess.
I arrived home to find four happy dogs, a clean Training Pad and the cat flap open. Danny had forgotten to pull up the drawbridge in his rush to leave. Let’s hope that the BM didn’t host a barbecue this afternoon.
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We can’t leave our Min Pins out when we are away, they would bark all day, at the neighbors, at the birds, at the squirrels, at each other!
If you find that keeping them in doesn’t work well for the dogs, maybe you could try a portable fenced area just out the door. We have an exercise pen that we use to contain the dogs when we have cocktail or dinner parties in our garden…it is easy to set up and move around.
The sound of a fountain may dull the sound of the neighbor on the other side of the fence, giving the dogs less of a reason to bark. I often leave the TV on in the living room while I’m working in my office since it tends mask the noise of people on the street; I really think it helps with the barking.
Good luck from Sarah, and BARK BARK from Berry and Basil
Hi Mildred
I think that this is the best move. I cast my bread upon the waters (internet ocean) and have received great advice from everyone. Now I don’t feel quite so much at sea…
Toot, toot!
Hi Kate
I loved your comment. It made me laugh.
I do like the sound of wind in bamboos. Although I wouldn’t like a big one growing against the other side of a perimeter fence. We can’t cut down even a Laylandii without permission from the district council. It’s a £20,000 fine if you fell without the official go ahead. I want to pollard some trees (mine) that are overhanging the garden and cut down a leylandii that I planted. I am execting a bit of a fight!
Our neighbours change so fast (the Min Pins?) that we only know a few.
Hi Kay
Yes your ideas have got me thinking. Laurels would disperse the noise. We also have a pump for the pond that had been broken for months. I have the new switch but have been too busy to fix it.
The BM’s strimming generally ruins our Sunday brunch. Didn’t mention the on The Visit. If I fix the switch we could breakfast with the back door open again on a Sunday!
Oh dear, it’s another case of good fences do good neighbours make. I notice other people have given great advice, but here’s a thing that many people neglect: plants! Seriously, many plants (laurel in particular) have great noise-deadening properties – we have clematis up our fence and notice that when it dies back in winter, we can hear our neighbours very clearly but in summer not at all. We also have a nice water cascade which ‘covers’ a lot of ambient noise from nearby gardens.
If you can’t persuade the BM to come round for dinner, bag up some summer fruit when the season comes around and take him a bag, saying you’re having a glut and you hope he can help you out. It’s hard to be nasty to a neighbour who’s come bearing gifts …
I’m keeping my head down this week as we have the builders in, so there is lots and lots of noise-I have some rather delicate neighbours at the end of my garden, but fortunately they have yappy cairns, so really don’t have a leg to stand on when it comes to noise- they don’t like us talking in our gardens ( I know…) They do get obsessed about trees anywhere near ( within twenty feet) their garden- which is rich as they have planted three massive bamboos, so all of us who abutt their borders, and fortunately we all agree they are a bit odd and laugh about it together, are just waiting for the glorious and inevitable day when we can complain about their bamboos invading our gardens….the day the first shoot pushes up through the floor of my shed I will dance with delight!
A Good Idea to pop round in a week or two Fi, it will show you care, and at the end of the day that is what matters.
Now, how do I ask my neighbour to cease hooting his car horn, right under our bedroom window, at 8am every morning when he goes to work. Bad enough to be woken up by an earthquake at 1am. Really!!
Hi Mildred
I wish you lived next door to me!
Our new regime seems to be working well, so far!
Hi Jo
What a terrible tale! At least it made you up sticks and find a haven in Wales but it must have been very stressful. Bad vibes from neighbours are horrid.
I will check our deeds!
Hi Sally,
These are all good ideas although I don’t think the BM would fancy sitting down and eating with us!
I’m going to pop round in a couple of weeks time to ask if our regime is working for him. Even if I win the lottery in the interim.
Hi Lilymarlene,
Good point. We have a friend with hearing aids and the yappy dogs trouble him so we lock them away when he visits. I didn’t notice a hearing aid but will check when I pop round.
We have two dogs, whippets, which don’t make a lot of noise (one of the reasons we chose the breed!) but do have their moments. Next door has a Yorkie, which he lets out now and then for a run and bark. It drives my husband nuts, but it doesn’t bother me at all.
The difference is that my husband wears hearing aids in both ears and babies yelling or screaming, and yapping dogs are two of the noises he finds most difficult.
Could it be that your neighbour has a hearing problem, because if so you will possibly never be able to please him?
Oh this is difficult and (as I see you have already realised) you can’t let it get out of hand. I can only think that a soft approach would be best and these are all I can think of:
1) Invite him round for one of your delicious meals (maybe if he met the Min Pins, he’d get to know them and would be more likely to put up with a little barking).
2) Offer him a Min Pin pup – he’d certainly fall in love with them then.
3) Open an account at his branch! You’d then be a client of his and he may see you in a different light. This last suggestion would definitely work if you won the lottery, of course.
Good Luck
Alas,
this is such a problem which can cause serious grief for all concerned if it escalates – & it’s not just with dogs.
Before we moved here to our little Ffarm in Wales, we lived on the edge of a small Cotswold village. I kept a few hens; the neighbours bought any spare eggs; & all was happy & tranquil.
Until new next-door neighbours arrived, that is.
They’d moved to the countryside for a bit of that hackneyed phrase, the ‘good life’; but couldn’t stand anything with fur or feathers. They complained to the local farmer about the irritating moos of his cattle when they were in the field which borders the bottom of the gardens; & the bloke spent his weekends blocking up holes in the eaves so the ‘noisy sparrows’ couldn’t nest there as their twittering chicks irritated him – I kid you not.
So when they expected me to give them free eggs in ‘payment’ for their suffering the fact that I kept poultry (half-a-dozen Black Rocks tucked down the bottom of our very large, very long garden), I wasn’t particularly amused.
So they proceeded to make our lives Hell. I suppose in a way, we have a lot to thank them for; because partially as a result of their nasty, relentless persecution, we were prompted to move; & we’re now far happier in our little slice of paradise.
But it can get completely out of proportion – & it’s a fact of life that non-doggy people find yapping dogs even more annoying than barking ones.
We have a Greenlander who does not bark at all – but unfortunately occasionally howls instead. And whilst we are very secluded with no near neighbours at all, when Nanuk revs up her lungs it’s invariably on days when the weather conditions are perfect to reverberate the sound all along the valley – I’m sure there’s a growing legend in the locality about the Lone Wolf of the Woods! It’s almost impossible to stop her & we’ve tried all sorts to break her habit.
Nobody’s said anything – yet – but I’m dreading that knock on the door….
Incidentally it may be worth having a quick check of your property deeds, regarding where you stand with your poultry: as we discovered to our cost where we lived before, when ‘those’ neighbours unearthed some long-forgotten clause forbidding fowl-keeping on the premises.
Because whilst your neighbour specified annoyance at the dogs, it doesn’t take long before other, seemingly innocuous things become major issues as well – unfortunately I speak from bitter experience!
At least you’re doing your darndest; & if you can prove you are (should the neighbour go for a noise abatement order) at least it’s all in your favour – with your other neighbours as well, hopefully.
Anyway – good luck!!
Oh Fi, you are NOT the ‘neighbour’ from hell’! You have taken the man next door’s views seriously and have done something about it! I think when you are leading busy lives, such as you do, it is difficult to notice(or even have time to notice) something that seems quite trivial – BUT . . . to the chap next door, of course, it isn’t trivial. There are always 2 sides. I am just so pleased to read you can understand HIS feelings.
Many years ago a very similar thing happened to me, the neighbours were out at work all day and 2 big dogs were given the run of their small back garden. They must have been bored out of their doggy-heads as there was nothing to do or see, the garden was fenced in on all sides, so they barked at every little sound – very loudly and for long periods. Eventually it started annoying me, and I plucked up courange to ask them if they realised what was happening. After receiving a lot of verbal abuse I made a hasty retreat! Later though Mrs ‘X’ came round to apologise and explained that they didn’t know what they could do – they HAD to go out to work and it seemed a shame to leave the dogs indoors all day, they were rescue dogs and had had a rotten start in life. I offered to bring them into my garden to play with my dog, Amos, for a couple of hours every day. We all got on very well after that.
I am sure you would hate to think you had caused anyone to find the need to complain – and yes, there were maybe more pleasant ways the man could have approached you to discuss it – but you have listened and taken his views into account. Well done!
Now . . . . about THAT barbecue . . . !