Hey ERA, so today I got home from work and saw this wonderful note hung up on my door.
I'm 100% sure I know what neighbor left the note, but I still went around at 6 PM and asked 8 neighbors questions regarding my dog, and whether they are annoyed by his barking or if he's excessively loud. All of them told me they didn't notice nor care, and that there are dogs everywhere (5 of said houses I asked own dogs) so barking is common and they aren't annoyed by it. Either way, everyone told me I'm fine. So it's not "Neighbors" and "people" it's "you."
RED house is my house, BLUE house is the neighbor in question, and question marks indicate I felt they were too far to be able to hear anything, but I might swing by tomorrow and ask them for feedback.
So, here's the fun part-
I've lived in this house for 12 years. Since we've moved in, this neighbor, I felt, has harassed me and my animals the entire time. When we moved here in 2007, we owned 3 dogs, and he called animal control on us within the first year and we were forced to give one up, because in our City at the time you weren't allowed to have more than 2 dogs. We were very sad, but we did it. Our dogs were primarily outside dogs for 11 of these 12 years, basically never slept inside except during the winter when it snowed.
Over those 12 years, they have called animal control on our house over 10 times, and animal control never did anything. They always told use they monitored the neighborhood for 30 minutes, but didn't here any barking from our dogs/house, and heard some very minor barking for seconds from neighboring dogs but not enough to be an issue.
In 2018, they called animal control 3 times in the span of one week in October. They came by and monitored for 30 minutes each time, and same thing. The animal control lady told us basically, she's going to tell the Neighbor in question to stop reporting us, because after 3 reports in a week she found nothing worth punishing, and to leave us alone. She did recommend I install a bark collar on my dogs, but personally I felt that wasn't humane, so I told her I won't be doing that. She then recommended I move them to be inside dogs, and I should try working with my neighbor, and I told her because it's October and it'll start snowing soon, my dogs already transitioned to being inside dogs and won't be outside much.
2 days later, one of my dogs died unexpectedly at night, and had black gunk in his mouth. He died right by the fence and near the neighbors yard, I'm 100% they poisoned them, but have no proof so... whatever. My surviving dog kept vomiting heavily that night, so pretty sure the dosage just wasn't strong enough to kill him. I filed a police report to have records, but with no proof I didn't push for anything. I did however by a security camera and install it in my yard to make sure nothing like this ever happens again.
That was it for a little over a year. With my dog losing his friend of 10+ years, I moved him to being an inside permanently and he just sleeps with me, and is never outside aside from using the bathroom. I'll admit, sometimes I do leave him outside while I'm work (usually from 11 AM - 2 PM), and he might bark a while, but it isn't too bad based off my security camera. He's definitely never outside from 7 AM though because I don't wake up until about 11 AM for work, usually his night/morning bathroom schedule is I take him outside and stay with him for 10 minutes, at 12 AM, and then take him outside and leave him out for 20 minutes while I shower. Security camera shows he doesn't bark at all during these 20 minutes. He really only barks if you leave him out in the dark, in that case he does bark hard non-stop, but in the last year those situations have happened about 5 times, unfortunately. He has gone hard for over 30 minutes, but once I get alerted by the constant Nest Alerts, I either rush home just to put him inside or call my family if they're home.
More fun parts!
While talking to my neighbors, 3 of them told me additional information I was not aware of regarding this same neighbor!
Neighbor 1 - Harassed them over their big dog (American Pitbull) making noise, and his children have been caught shooting BB pellets at their dog before. Absolutely hates this neighbor and sympathies hard with me.
Neighbor 2 - Told me for the last 17 years they lived there they had countless run in with said neighbor, and said neighbor also caused them to give up one dog to Animal Control. Tells me neighbor is a dick and recently on Sunday afternoon he yelled at him through the fence regarding the dog. Also said he once came over, knocked on his door and held a timer in his face and told him "If your dogs ever bark for more than 5 minutes I'm calling the police."
Neighbor 3 - Nothing regarding dogs, but told me said neighbor will calls the police and report you for literally any reason. Absolutely hates them and is sorry I'm dealing with them. Didn't ask them for go in depth or clarify anything.
So, I'm not sure where to go from here. I wanna be proactive and cover my bases. I'm considering calling Animal Control and alerting them of the situation, and mention our 10+ previous complaints and how they all went nowhere, and invite them to randomly come over and see my dog isn't even outside 90% of the time. I also want to invite SCPA to come over and investigate and meet my Dog. They can see he's just an old Dog that's taken good care of and is happy. Those "poor outside living conditions" are non-existent considering he doesn't live outside. The hair thing was kind of valid before I cut his hair (in November) I let his hair grow out from June - October cause I wanted to not cut it until it started snowing, so his hair was pretty messy for a while.
I just don't really know how to be proactive against the threat of a civil lawsuit. After, in my opinion, being harassed by this asshat for the last decade I don't really want to have ANY interaction with him, nor talk to him. If he wants to take me to court, he can, I'm just not sure what to do if he does. Obviously I know for a fact I want to get written statements from my neighbors with past bad experiences with him, and point out to the court he's just an asshole, but not sure what else I can do to prep for that.
So ERA, if anyone can give me any feedback or advice on what to do, please do! I'm a little stressed out, annoyed, and kind of bummed about this situation.
