What can you legally do in this situation.

[daddyo]

If all else fails, collect Fido in your truck one night, lure him with dog treats and a big bone, then take him for a really nice ride across the state line and drop him off at an animal shelter as an abandoned dog you found on the side of the road (remove all collars and id tags of course). At worst it'll cost you some gas money and some lost sleep, but you'll sleep easy after that.

After repeated failed attempts at reasoning with the owner, that's exactly what my brother did several years ago when a neighbor's dog kept howling and barking at all hours of the night. Problem solved.

Edited October 27, 2011 by DaddyO

[Guest Lester Weevils]

I don't mind barking dogs. It is either neutral or actually music to my ears. For years on my block, all the neighbors had dogs and they would all bark at will. But they were all inside/outside dogs and not allowed to bark all night. Nobody minded neighbors barking dogs (in the daytime) because everybody had their own dog that would bark on occasion. I knew all the neighbor dogs barks and could easily tell which dogs were having conversations with each other.

Perhaps co-incidentally, we never had any burglary, broken-into cars, or vandalism over the years. Lots of criminals apparently are not dog lovers.

There is an apartment complex back behind our street and a couple years ago they got a tenant apparently on disability with at least borderline schizophrenia. Every time one of the neighborhood dawgs would bark, he would come out into his parking lot and start yelling "Shut that !@#$%^ dog up! Are you deaf or what? yadda yadda".

He eventually called the popo. Maybe he had called the popo many times before they got around to responding. Got a visit from a nice Humane Society worker. The man explained he didn't have any authority to do anything about our dogs as long as they are not being mistreated, but if there were repeated complaints eventually police would come and perhaps hand out tickets.

I explained to him that they are rescue hounds and that coonhounds might explode if they can't bark on occasion. Which the humane society man already knew and agreed with me. I explained they are never allowed to bark after dark or before about 10 am. He was cool about it but counselled that it would be good to limit the barking to avoid trouble.

So I got a bark collar for the loudest and most persistent singer of my two. Sometimes when I let them out into the back fenced woods he will run and bark furiously for a few minutes then go to "quiet hunting" mode, but if there is a good scent from the previous night he might run around tracing the scent indefinitely barking his fool head off.

So now when I let em out, I go back inside and set a 15 minute timer. If my dog is still raising hell after 15 minutes I go out and put on his bark collar. If he didn't get to bark at least a little bit every day he would probably explode.

The next-door neighbor has several small rescue dogs that can yap all day if they are in the mood. But he doesn't have as much trouble because the little yappy dogs are not very loud and a hundred feet away you can barely hear them. But my dawgs you can hear a long ways off.

Anyway, even after limiting the barking to a couple of 15 minute episodes per day, that old crazy guy would still come out and yell every time they would make a peep. I used to work in mental health and had the attitude that hardly anything good comes from having much to do with crazy strangers in the real world. Got nothing against crazy people. I feel sorry for them, but it is easy to make things worse if you interact too much with them.

The next door neighbor however is either more foolish or more braver than me, and he is calm, friendly, and seemingly slow to anger. Next door neighbor with the yappy little dogs, eventually walked over and engaged the crazy guy in conversation. He explained that he tried to keep his yappy dogs as quiet as possible but it was only short daytime periods, and got around to explaining that they are rescue dogs who didn't have any other place to go. Strangely, the crazy guy was surprised and impressed that somebody would take in abandoned dogs, and changed his mind. Then the crazy guy started complaining about my hounds and the next-door neighbor explained that my dawgs are also rescues.

It was amazing that the old crazy guy got sympathetic to us and the dogs after finding out the dawgs are rescues and not just beasts we had installed in the back yard solely to make his life miserable. From that day forward, the old crazy guy never gave use any more problems.

It forced me to re-evaluate my negative expectations of anything good coming of excessive interaction with neighbors-from-hell. But from other experiences of escalation trying to reason with certain other neighbors-from-hell, I still suspect that this was a fluke that talking things over with the guy helped rather than hurt.

[Just2Honor]

Gadget called "Bark Off" did the trick for me. Battery operated sensor makes the gadget send a ultra high pitch sound when the dof barks. Takes a week or two to train the dog that barking gets an unpleasant experience. Set it up on your property aimed at the area the dog is in. Have several at diferent price ranges depending on the power (distance) Dogs still bark if truly disturbed but don't bark at every sound or squirrel, etc.

[TMF]

But from other experiences of escalation trying to reason with certain other neighbors-from-hell, I still suspect that this was a fluke that talking things over with the guy helped rather than hurt.

I agree that so many people aren't capable of taking criticism or complaints without getting defensive, but still I feel it is the right thing to do to always talk to the person first before taking it to the next level. It just seems like nowadays people are incapable of solving their problems face to face and actually seeing them resolved. If the neighbor is an a-hole then he probably won't respect a civil request to keep his dogs inside at night, but I think everyone deserves the benefit of the doubt until such time that they show their true colors. This guy might have no idea his dogs are such a bother at night. But if he reacts poorly, then get the cops out there in the wee hours when his dogs are carrying on. The police can give out tickets and are more likely to when the guy answers the door and gives the police officers a hard time.

[Guest WyattEarp]

I agree that so many people aren't capable of taking criticism or complaints without getting defensive, but still I feel it is the right thing to do to always talk to the person first before taking it to the next level. It just seems like nowadays people are incapable of solving their problems face to face and actually seeing them resolved. If the neighbor is an a-hole then he probably won't respect a civil request to keep his dogs inside at night, but I think everyone deserves the benefit of the doubt until such time that they show their true colors. This guy might have no idea his dogs are such a bother at night. But if he reacts poorly, then get the cops out there in the wee hours when his dogs are carrying on. The police can give out tickets and are more likely to when the guy answers the door and gives the police officers a hard time.

I suspect a large part of this problem is due to the fact that so many people get defensive about everything, and then you have the stories on the news (thanks to the anti-gun panic/hysteria inducing media) about someone going postal on someone else over something stupid or trivial..

case and point (in regards to the anti-gun panic/hysteria inducing media)

Alabama fan shoots, kills LSU fan and wife after Tiger loss - Dr. Saturday - NCAAF Blog - Yahoo! Sports

and a person with a complaint is honestly afraid of how someone's going to react. They don't really KNOW the person, they don't if the person has a short fuse, are they going to handle the criticism well? or are they going to fly off the handle and hit someone, or pull a gun. Is there property going to become a target for vandalism after they say something? It gets even more complicated if you have children in your household. You just never really know with people nowadays, and I don't think most people want to risk it. They just feel it's better to call the police and report the matter.

But I know how you feel, I'm the most easy going guy you'll ever met, albeit a bit on the hyper side at times, but I get frustrated when someone with a concern goes to a teacher or a police officer or an apt complex manager without first talking to me, because if they'd just tell me whats on their mind, we can talk about it, and work on a resolution, but at the same time I don't help myself when I'm cussing out the router and the playstation 3 because they won't recognize each other when I'm configuring it. lol. Guess they think I'll cuss them out too.

It's not like the old days, where a quick conversation and a handshake were all you needed to resolve a minor complaint or dispute like it was when you were out with your grandpa back in the 80's. The world's gone mad and people are testy, easily provoked, rude, disrespectful and discourteous and selfish.

When I was a young boy, I never dreamed about feeling the need to carry a handgun, and other than quail, rabbit and pheasant hunting, I really just wasn't interested in firearms. I wasn't interested in soldier stuff or being GI Joe. I just loved nature and wanted to explore every bit of it, and fish and hunt and rock climb, and hike and photograph. I'll be thankful when May 2013 rolls around, because I'm in pursuit of getting back to those good old days where I can go enjoy and do that stuff and slow life down. College and city life has been hell on wheels for me and life has just been so fast! and im getting off the beaten path here, so I'll end it here.

[hornett22]

LOL. What will that do? Make their fur fall out?

Pretty much. Just patches most likely. Don't do it the winter though. I hate to see a dog suffer because their owner is a maroon. A dogs unsociable behavior is usually the result of its owners ignorance and/or laziness.

[Guest m500 lover]

It's doubtful the dog owner will take this in a nice way, no matter how politely you try. It will be viewed as you're telling him what to do on his property, with his animals and he'll most likely tell you to take a flying suck at a monkey's ass.

You can however call the police and file a disturbing the peace charge. You as a property owner have a reasonable expectation to a noise free environment and if the animal is causing you to not have this reasonable expectation, then the dog's owner can be held liable.

If that means calling the police at 3 am, and having the cops bang on his door and give him a ticket, so be it. You can also turn him into the Humane Society by reporting the dog is being neglected because it's ALWAYS crying, and could possibly be being abused

Get a video camera stick it on a tripod, open the window and get a video recording of the dog howling incessantly. That will hold its weight in gold to backup your claim. Make sure to set the proper date and time. Get video in both daylight and night time.

if the police won't do anything, then go meet with your town or counties District Attorney, and take the video in and show him the video and tell him it's becoming a serious detriment to your expectation of a loud noise free environment, and that you would like the dogs owner to be held accountable. Print off Disturbing the Peace ordinances, noise ordinances, etc, show him you know what the law is, and you're going to push the issue. If he doesn't want to play ball, tell him a nice visit to your local paper will be made, and you'll make it public. DA's don't like bad publicity.

Don't kill the dog though, animal cruelty is a felony, and it's not the dog's fault its owner is a negligent piece of **** who is too lazy to take the time to train his animal to obey commands and not bark.

Before anyone says, well dogs bark, its what they do, my father had a cocker spaniel when I was three, and we had since he was about 7 weeks old. Dad trained him, and disciplined him and that dog never once barked unless he felt there was a threat to my safety or that someone was trying to do harm to me or my mom. He never barked at squirrels, or cats, or people coming to the front door. But he would let us know if something was wrong, and that low throaty growl and lip curl told us all we ever needed to.

Dogs can be trained not to bark incessantly. It's a matter of whether its owner wants to or not.

It's getting to the point where I think people should either have to train their animal or pay someone to train the dog for them before they can get a dog. It all boils down to common courtesy and respect, and the majority of people nowadays have absolutely zero of both and they just think they can do whatever the hell it is they want and not be held accountable.

If all else fails, collect Fido in your truck one night, lure him with dog treats and a big bone, then take him for a really nice ride across the state line and drop him off at an animal shelter as an abandoned dog you found on the side of the road (remove all collars and id tags of course). At worst it'll cost you some gas money and some lost sleep, but you'll sleep easy after that.

It'd cost more than that most places charge about 30 bucks to surrender a dog whether yours or not.

Sent with Droid Incredible using Tapatalk.

[mikegideon]

Have a nice, rational discussion with the neighbors. Remind them again when needed.

Then call the law if it continues.

I tried all of that with my neighbors. You know what I wound up having to do.

[Garufa]

I tried all of that with my neighbors. You know what I wound up having to do.

Yep. I think your fiendish device is probably the best solution for the immediate annoyance and probably any other dogs in the area that even think about barking.

[mikegideon]

Yep. I think your fiendish device is probably the best solution for the immediate annoyance and probably any other dogs in the area that even think about barking.

The dog has been gone for awhile. At least I haven't heard him. The Dog Blaster made it tolerable when he was still around. Shut him up every time.

BTW... it also chased off everything that would cause them to bark.

Edited October 28, 2011 by mikegideon

[Guest Lester Weevils]

After all else fails, enter the Dogblaster 9000.

I never saw a description of yer Dogblaster 9000. When I first saw yer pic, thought it was just a picture of an old PA piezo tweeter stack as a joke. Back in the 1970's lots of small-time local sound companies would manufacture and sell budget tweeter stacks which looked like that.

If it is actually the output end of a hefty bark-suppression device, would love description of the entire system or perhaps a link if you already described it! Sounds interesting.

[mikegideon]

I never saw a description of yer Dogblaster 9000. When I first saw yer pic, thought it was just a picture of an old PA piezo tweeter stack as a joke. Back in the 1970's lots of small-time local sound companies would manufacture and sell budget tweeter stacks which looked like that.

If it is actually the output end of a hefty bark-suppression device, would love description of the entire system or perhaps a link if you already described it! Sounds interesting.

I designed and built the thing, but you can buy similar. Google "Pain Field Generator". My source was actually FM, since that's what I had lying around. Generator, 100W/ch power amp, and the tweeter array. By the time I got to it (after almost a year), I was pissed off enough to use computers and my trusty table saw to kick his ass. The blaster puts out some serious SPL, and the output spectrum looks like this...

[Guest Lester Weevils]

I designed and built the thing, but you can buy similar. Google "Pain Field Generator". My source was actually FM, since that's what I had lying around. Generator, 100W/ch power amp, and the tweeter array. By the time I got to it (after almost a year), I was pissed off enough to use computers and my trusty table saw to kick his ass. The blaster puts out some serious SPL, and the output spectrum looks like this...

Thanks for the good info, Mike. Good to hear from a credible source that such things can actually work. You never can tell just reading random anonymous web articles.

Did you just manually key the thang when the dog would bark?

Dumb questions if you don't mind--

1. I don't understand "FM" in this context. Is that a generator output from your analyzer or some other piece of test gear?

2. Was the spectrum plot recorded direct or from a mic?

3. Am not familiar with Audio Precision analyzers and dunno how to read the plot.

-- Does it represent a low-resolution FFT? A fairly pure signal around 23 KHz? A smallish FFT with about 833 us frame size, where one wouldn't expect to see any peaks "between" 1200Hz-spaced harmonics?

-- Or does this analysis represent very high bin resolution which is accurately displaying a cluster of clean sine waves?

Thanks!

[mikegideon]

Thanks for the good info, Mike. Good to hear from a credible source that such things can actually work. You never can tell just reading random anonymous web articles.

Did you just manually key the thang when the dog would bark?

Dumb questions if you don't mind--

1. I don't understand "FM" in this context. Is that a generator output from your analyzer or some other piece of test gear?

2. Was the spectrum plot recorded direct or from a mic?

3. Am not familiar with Audio Precision analyzers and dunno how to read the plot.

-- Does it represent a low-resolution FFT? A fairly pure signal around 23 KHz? A smallish FFT with about 833 us frame size, where one wouldn't expect to see any peaks "between" 1200Hz-spaced harmonics?

-- Or does this analysis represent very high bin resolution which is accurately displaying a cluster of clean sine waves?

Thanks!

Yep. A 60 second blast would normally do it. Note that this wasn't your basic Bark-off from TV. It does better than 130dbspl.

1. Frequency modulation. 24.5khz carrier modulated by a 1khz tone. The generator was something I designed for a broadcast application. I had a few of them lying around, so I just retuned it for the dog's ears.

2. The spectrum plot was from the generator.

3. High resolution FFT. 16 bit word length, 192kHz sampling rate, and 16,000 frequency bins. The sidebands are what you see with tone modulated FM, and that's what the dog heard. Of course, at that spl, he also heard intermodulation products because of mechanical overload in his ears. He also most likely heard a 1khz component because of the frequency response slope in his hearing, and the fact the his little ears were being driven into nonlinearity. I didn't set out to punish the dog, but he was for damn sure gonna shut up.

[TMF]

Yep. A 60 second blast would normally do it. Note that this wasn't your basic Bark-off from TV. It does better than 130dbspl.

1. Frequency modulation. 24.5khz carrier modulated by a 1khz tone. The generator was something I designed for a broadcast application. I had a few of them lying around, so I just retuned it for the dog's ears.

2. The spectrum plot was from the generator.

3. High resolution FFT. 16 bit word length, 192kHz sampling rate, and 16,000 frequency bins. The sidebands are what you see with tone modulated FM, and that's what the dog heard. Of course, at that spl, he also heard intermodulation products because of mechanical overload in his ears. He also most likely heard a 1khz component because of the frequency response slope in his hearing, and the fact the his little ears were being driven into nonlinearity. I didn't set out to punish the dog, but he was for damn sure gonna shut up.

Wow. How did you power the flux capacitor?

[mikegideon]

Wall socket. Lester started it :-)

[Handsome Rob]

I own & live at a boarding kennel.......

I'll trade you your one, for my fifty six.

I am super serious.

[Guest Lester Weevils]

I guess one consideration would be to do a little study and calibrate the output level versus intended distance to keep the sound lower than a permanent threshold shift exposure. A temporary threshold shift is like if you shoot a loud gun and then you can't hear very well for awhile, but eventually your hearing comes back. A permanent threshold shift is from a sound so loud that it causes permanent hearing loss.

Just thinking, if the sound happened to be in the permanent threshold shift amplitude level for dawgs, then after awhile the gadget wouldn't work anymore because the animal would be deaf in that frequency range.

Back when I would occasionally study perceptual psych, one animal they like for permanent threshold shift study is Guinea Pigs, because they are very easy to make deef with loud sounds.

[mikegideon]

I guess one consideration would be to do a little study and calibrate the output level versus intended distance to keep the sound lower than a permanent threshold shift exposure. A temporary threshold shift is like if you shoot a loud gun and then you can't hear very well for awhile, but eventually your hearing comes back. A permanent threshold shift is from a sound so loud that it causes permanent hearing loss.

Just thinking, if the sound happened to be in the permanent threshold shift amplitude level for dawgs, then after awhile the gadget wouldn't work anymore because the animal would be deaf in that frequency range.

Back when I would occasionally study perceptual psych, one animal they like for permanent threshold shift study is Guinea Pigs, because they are very easy to make deef with loud sounds.

Hearing damage is related to spl and time. I wasn't trying to fry his ears. It's about 136dbspl off the front of the array. He was some distance away from me, so I needed full power to pucker his butt.

[Guest WyattEarp]

mike, i take it only the dog can hear this and not your average human being?

[Guest Lester Weevils]

Hearing damage is related to spl and time. I wasn't trying to fry his ears. It's about 136dbspl off the front of the array. He was some distance away from me, so I needed full power to pucker his butt.

Yeah, wasn't being critical. Was just thinking that if one intended to routinely use such device in a boarding kennel or in a back yard for one's own dawgs, then it would be prudent to look up the noise exposure data fer dogs and calibrate the device with a table of duration, distance and power levels, to avoid damaging the critter's hearing. At the most pragmatic level, to make sure the device would continue to work on the critters, and on the other hand perhaps they need to preserve excellent hearing in that ultrasonic range in order to best-detect burglars, rodents or clinking food dishes.

====

Thanks humoring me with the details on your gadget. Spreading the spectrum with FM sounds like a smart idea and I bet you are right that the IM nonlinearities in the ear would have the dawg hearing 1 KHz and maybe other tones. Did you ever hear any kind of IM tones from the back-end of the device?

Something I've long assumed from hands-on experience but dunno if it is true-- It seemed that most speakers can generate a lot higher broadband SPL before burning up, compared to a single sine wave which concentrates all the power (and speaker stress) at one frequency. Ferinstance if you want x dB spl out of a monophonic electric bass then you need a much heftier rig than if you want the same X dB spl of a full music mix. Another example-- A Rhodes electric piano or a steel guitar (minimal harmonic content), requires a much stronger amp and speaker to generate x dB spl, compared to what is necessary for acoustic piano or electric geetar (harmonically rich).

If that really is true in general, or for the piezos in specific, then a spread spectrum might deliver more spl out of the piezos without frying them?

If there is any merit to a theory that a wider spectrum could milk more spl out of a transducer without frying it, a similar approach could be an octave of noise tight-bandpassed between 20KHz and 40KHz? But such a narrow-band noise signal might not be as likely to make lower-freq IM components in the dawg's ear.

Except for some digital logic electronics, I never messed with radio or anything out of the audio bandwidth. Googled the latest AP analysers and those look like fun toys if one could justify the expense.

Apologies being nerdy. Don't know much about it but it is fun. I can analyze to my hearts content with a computer audio interface for the audio band, but even a 192 K sampling rate audio interface (if sanely designed) will anti-alias around 20 KHz, so off-the-shelf audio interfaces are not much good for ultrasonic stuff regardless of how nice they may be in the audio band.

One time I built a tracking swept bandpass filter to use with a memory scope, but it wasn't a practical analyzer to tote around and only good for slow-ringing a room or analyzing static signals. My old hardware "practical" analyzers were the old fashioned kind with a bank of analog bandpass filters.

Edited October 29, 2011 by Lester Weevils

[mikegideon]

I can't hear anything out of the blaster. The tweeters are pretty linear, and I'm not overdriving them. Piezos don't really consume any significant power. You can't burn them up. You can break them by exceeding their rated voltage.

Here are some of the commercial products. Funny that I stumbled onto the same tweeters before I knew the product existed...

Ultrasonic Devices

[TMF]

Wall socket. Lester started it :-)

Yeah, I just can't pass up any opportunity for a Back to the Future quote.

[Guest Lester Weevils]

I can't hear anything out of the blaster. The tweeters are pretty linear, and I'm not overdriving them. Piezos don't really consume any significant power. You can't burn them up. You can break them by exceeding their rated voltage.

Here are some of the commercial products. Funny that I stumbled onto the same tweeters before I knew the product existed...

Ultrasonic Devices

Yeah since the thangs have relatively high impedance and are mostly capacitative in nature (lower impedance with higher frequency) they don't consume much power. The high efficiency and low price of piezo tweeters ought to have dominated in small and medum-sized sound reinforcement speakers if they had sounded a little better. Never tried to test their linearity, but uneven frequency response or some other explanation typically makes them "ratty" sounding. Presumably it must be a tough problem to solve or the people who make piezo tweeters would have improved them by now and proceeded to dominate the market?

In the 1970's into the 80's many "working musician priced" PA speakers used Piezos, but they didn't sound near as good as compression drivers. Maybe about 1990 some of the Community smaller pro-sound speakers used piezos. The company claimed to have figured out how to improve the sound. IIRC by adapting the crossover network rather than improving the tweeters. I had opportunity to use some of those three-way Community speakers with Piezo tweeters and they didn't sound shabby for the money, but more expensive JBL or EV compression tweeters remained my favorites. Apparently Community no longer uses piezo tweeters in current products.

Here is a dirt-cheap price on a new-in-the-box 6 piezo array. Most likely a lot cheaper than building one--

Amazon.com: Pyle Pro PAHT6 4 Driver Tweeter System: Car Electronics

Maybe voltage is the only thing that fries them. The innards are similar to the cheap piezo buzzers-- A thin metal disc with a layer of rather brittle ceramic baked on. 25 years ago I experimented a lot adapting piezo buzzer elements for inexpensive drum pad triggers and instrument pickups. Wrote some music magazine articles about it. They pickup pretty well and can be made to sound pretty good considering the low cost. I initially used elements dissected out of piezo tweeters, but the dirt cheap buzzers worked just as good and the elements were much easier to remove from the housing.

One issue was that the elements had to be protected well, especially used in drum pad triggers, because they are easy to break. Unless mounted properly, sufficient strong vibration would eventually crack the thin brittle ceramic layer and then they had to be replaced with another one-dollar part.

So perhaps voltage is the only thing that kills piezo tweeters? Or possibly if you drive them to sufficient excursion it cracks the ceramic layer? Or perhaps a combination of the two?

Was just thinking ferinstance if a dog-zapper could be fed a signal making it only 3 dB more effective then one could get away with 6 piezos rather than 12 or whatever. Just idle thinking. If voltage is the upper limit then presumably the signal would need a low crest factor? In that case a sine wave or other harmonically simple wave would be better than filtered noise because it would have a lower crest factor than noise?

A square wave would have the best crest factor but in that case you would lose at least 3 dB effectiveness. Ferinstance a 24 KHz square wave doesn't have a second harmonic and the third harmonic at 72 KHz would be inaudible to the dawg, so the 3 dB of signal contributed by the harmonics would be useless for the task.

Maybe another approach would be to modify the horn to be highly resonant at the desired frequency? A tweeter would try to avoid resonances, but for this purpose resonances might be our friend?