Stop. Please stop. Stop it! STOP BARKING!!!
This is what I say to myself almost every night. And in the middle of every night. Oh, and at 4 a.m. Right around 5:30 a.m., and then finally when I drag my butt out of bed at 7 a.m.
I can’t take it anymore, I truly cannot take the neighborhood dog that barks all night long. I don’t know who this family is, who the dog is, or why in the world they keep the dog outside at all hours of the night, but I’ve just been through almost four straight sleepless nights because of this barking dogs. So now I come to work – tired, ragged, bags under my eyes, and cranky.
I love dogs – I wish I could have one more than anything else, I just don’t have the time or the room for one. I live in an apartment building that is basically in front of a large subdivision of large older homes in north Arlington. Most of them have a yard of some type and I’m guessing this is where my barking friend lives somewhere behind my apartment.
I’m desperate – what do I do? I don’t want to call someone so that some official city person comes out to do something – not that I believe in Arlington County’s ability to actually get something like that done. But how do I go about this? How do I find the neighbor when so many people in the neighborhood have dogs? Lets say that I turned Colombo and even did find out who it was – what do you even say to someone?
Like I said – I am pro-dog. Very pro-dog. But with the way we are packed in like sardines in all of our respective neighborhoods, I just can’t take another night of barking for eight or nine straight hours.
I have a .12 guage if you need it. Next time he is barking go outside and figure out which house he belongs to. Then go pay a visit to the owner or write them a letter if you want to go the non-confrontational route.
Join the Cherrydale listserv and give ’em a shout: http://www.cherrydale.net . Someone there may know what’s up.
I have a close friend in Texas, he sold his trailer for a good price and bought and moved into a nicer one right next door. Turns out, the buyers, now his next-door neighbors, became complete assholes.
After moving in, they decided a nice addition would be a chicken coop, complete with rooster, out back. Unfortunately for my friend, said rooster was 10 feet from his bedroom window. You can imagine, every morning at 5am “chack-chack-ak-ah!” For hours.
He tried everything, talking to them, the owner of the property, the cops, even the INS. Nothing worked. This went on for months.
So, one morning, the rooster ceased to be. “Mist” was the word he used to describe the incident. I shall not name names or places or dates since this would tend to incriminate people.