Dog Neighbor Dicks

This article is based on the transcript from the My Favorite Bitch podcast, S01E016.

🐶 🐶 🐶

Welcome to MFB, where we share honest tales about the good the bad and the “some of my neighbors are dog dicks” ugly of raising dogs and other pets!

Yes, today we're going to talk about the humans, specifically some of the humans that I live amongst here in Central Virginia.

This is going to be an honest discussion about pet rearing. Today we're going to talk about a little bit of that owner asshole-ish side.

I currently live in Central Virginia in a lovely neighborhood. It's an older suburban/subdivision-ish style, but it's older. Some of the houses here were built in the 60s but we've got some new development, so it's kind of a mix. There are a lot of mature trees so it's not like your brand new wide-open cookie-cutter neighborhood, it's very lovely.

For the most part, 99% of the time, it is wonderfully quiet. We don't have loud music parties, skateboarders, none of that crap. But we have a very age-diverse community and a lot of different types of people here, and a lot of dogs!

I love living in dog-friendly neighborhoods. We get to meet people when we're out walking, we get a little socialization for Moxie (my Labrador retriever), she gets to experience other dogs of different types and sizes and I've met people myself.

It was almost a year and a half after we moved in before we ended up getting Moxie. I hardly knew anybody, I knew maybe three of my neighbors. Since I've gotten Moxie and I've been out walking with her, all of a sudden I know a whole bunch of people.

However, there are a few people who maybe need a little refresher in dog ownership etiquette. Because there is etiquette. There is a social contract when you have a dog.

Probably the biggest impact on other people is barking. I’m sure a lot of people can relate. They've lived near or next to homes where there is a dog that barks incessantly.

My husband and I are very, very lucky that we don't live next to somebody who has a dog that barks constantly. I've been there and that is maddening.

The last house that we were in was a rental in a very similar type of a neighborhood where we could hear a dog every night across the valley.

It was distant enough that it didn't impact us if we were sitting outside on the deck, which we often did. But, I would sometimes say to myself, or say to my husband, “I can't even imagine if I were living next door to that dog because it never shuts up.”

We are pretty lucky in our current house. We don't have an incessant barker. However, we do have a dog right next door, I'll just call him Fucker (his name actually rhymes with Fucker).

Fucker is a grown dog and has a brother, we'll call him Mac. Fucker and Mac are both the same breed, a large breed.

Mac is the sweetest, quietest thing. I don't know that I've ever heard Mac make a sound. Fucker is a barker and 90% of the time when he barks one of his parents comes out and pulls him in.

They're lovely people really, I really don't mean to say that they are assholes. I think they're just busy and distracted.

So most of the time they come out and pull Fucker in…which is, by the way, exactly what you're supposed to do when your dog starts barking outside and you live in a neighborhood where barking might impact somebody negatively. When your dog doesn't stop barking after a few seconds, it's your job as an owner to come out and quiet the pooch.

You do what you can to get them to be quiet (provided that it's legal and not abusive): you can pull your dog in, you can train your dog to stop, you can use bark collars, whatever. I don't care. But, it is your responsibility as a dog owner to keep your dog from barking incessantly because it IS bothersome to people.

So most of the time the owners of Fucker and Mac do call him in.

But once in a while it goes on a little too long. I have passive-aggressively (because their house is adjacent to my home office) gone out and opened my window, waited until Fucker's mom comes out and pulls him in, and then slam down my window so that she hears and knows.

I hope they never listen to this podcast because they'll think, “oh my God she's such a bitch talking about us.” They're actually really lovely people but they also have weird hours, and it's probably the nature of their job - they have their own business.

Sometimes Fucker is out barking at like 4:30 in the morning or very late at night, and when a dog does that—when it's out at 4:30 in the morning or at 11:30 at night on a weeknight—it doesn't matter how much it barks, it's bothersome.

A bit of a way from our house there's another neighbor and I kind of think this one IS kind of an ass. This is a couple of streets over so I don't really hear the barking when we're home, but when we're out walking we often pass by this house. It's on a corner—a pretty big corner—so it takes a couple of minutes to get past the house and it's pretty open so we're seen as we're coming up. At this particular house - two dogs, one of whom is very quiet and one of whom is very, very vocal - the dogs kind of come a little bit into the road, which also bothers me. We have a couple of dogs around us that do that, which is why I carry pepper spray with me. I've never had to use it but if a dog starts coming and approaching, my dog I have to be prepared.

Often when we pass this corner house, those two dogs are out very close to the road and the one is just barking incessantly. And the barking really doesn't bother me the most. What bothers me most is this: The owner a couple of times has been out there and not said anything.

One time she had walked out onto her deck, let the dogs out, and they came immediately to the road because we were just about to pass her house. They started jaw-jacking us at like 6 in the morning. She's still in her nightgown, probably about my age so she's in, you know, her glory years. She went to her car to get something, shut it, and walks up the stairs to her deck where they came out. Halfway up the stairs she turns, looks back at me right in the eye, walks into the house, and doesn't call the dog. So they just continue to bark at us the whole time that we went around the corner to pass their house and I thought, “You fucking bitch.”

I just thought it was rude. Again it's a social contract. You’re right there. Call your dogs in or at least make an attempt.

A couple of days later we had the same thing happen. It was about 6/6:15 in the morning on a Saturday so of course EVERYBODY was sleeping in. This neighbor is out on the deck smoking a cigarette. We come around and I said, “Good morning!” because I often do wave at neighbors and say hello if they're out. She just completely ignored me, didn't say anything and again the dogs were out barking at us right at the edge of the road.

I happen to know her next-door neighbor whom I've met on walks. Let’s call her Shirley. Shirley has complained about the asshole neighbor to me. So I know that somebody is impacted. I guarantee you she's probably got seven neighbors within a stone's throw who are impacted, and it's like she doesn't care. And those are the asshole peoples that drive me nuts.

It's not that it's not impacting me, your dog isn't actually coming at my dog, I'm not pulling pepper spray on you and I'm not hearing the barking when I'm at my house trying to relax, which is when it would really piss me off.

But I know it affects your neighbors. I have empathy. I can put myself in their shoes and I know that even if Shirley had not said something I would know that the barking would impact her.

If you're right there, just go out there or say something, call them in. I know she can, she can effectively and successfully call them in, because she's done it before. I've seen her before where she's decided, “I guess this time I'm going to stop them from barking.” She'll step out the door, she'll call them in and they come, they come right to her. They're not the kind of dogs that are like, “Fuck you owner, I'm gonna stay out here and bark!” I had a dog like that once. He would bark and bark and bark and I would come out because I don't like to let my dog bark. If he kept doing it, which often he did, I'd have to grab him by the collar or bring a leash with me and pull him back because he was like, “No it's a deer, Mom! it's going to come and hurt us!”

The other thing that drives me nuts with the neighbors is when dogs come out into the road in an aggressive manner.

I mean it's hard to tell with a dog, you don't know what's going through a dog's head. Are they aggressive or just being protective? Not my job to figure it out. But you know the type. Their dogs come out barking or growling into the road, (the owners nowhere to be found). They don't have actual fences they just let their dogs out. They come out into the road and confront us and there's one particular house I know their dogs are not friendly because they have a sign on their gate and on their mailbox for deliveries, that says “Our dogs don't behave so please leave the packages here at the curb.”

I don't get it. There's this growing sense of I'm an individual I can do whatever the hell I want and there's no more social contract.

It's this idea that you just don't care what impact you have on the world. It's the same as people who are in a neighborhood such as mine who would play their music really really loudly late at night. Like you know…you have to know. You're either so stupid that you don't know that you're impacting other people or you don't care.

It's probably that you don't care and I don't understand that. I have empathy. I think of what I do and how it impacts the world around me. So, I don't run my buzz saw at 6 in the morning because I know my neighbors are sleeping. I don't play loud music at midnight because of a neighbor who has a baby, and I know that other people would hear me and it would bother them.

I don't understand how people do that, how people can let their dog bark and bark and bark 5, 10, 15, 20 minutes, an hour, two hours, and never go out there and say anything. But poor dog! The dog is either under some sort of duress or there is something out there that you're not paying attention to.

So, I don't get it. I don't understand people who don't respect what impact they have on the world but it's a reality that we have to deal with.

Tell me about your experiences with shitty neighbors with dogs because I'm sure I've only touched the surface of some of the ass-holiness that goes on when people are pet owners. What has your experience been and how did you deal with it, what have you done?

I had a dog that barked and barked next door way back when, and I would just have to go over and knock on their door and ask him to shut their dog up. Usually it was the young 16-year-old who would come home from school before the mom was home from work, let the dog out, play his music so loud that he couldn't even hear me knocking at the door, and the dog would just bark for an hour.

Again, he didn't care about the impact of his dog on the world.

Tell me about your experiences, let me know and tell me what you think about the podcast. I am @thebeann67 on TikTok, Instagram, and Facebook.

Check out my YouTube channel thebeann/Beth Ann Campbell where you can also find my podcast and other fun videos on the playlist.

I hope that you don't have shitty dog neighbors, but if you do I want to hear about it!

Now go take a nap, go chew on a bone, or go play fetch. In any case, take it easy.

Check out the My Favorite Bitch page for links to the podcast video and audio.