[Dailydrool] Upsetting neighborhood norms

[Esther Strom]

I'm sure it's not an option, but my first suggestion is - move! Why would you want to live in a neighborhood with people like that?

More realistically, I'd say since your dogs are not the ones making noise, you should politely suggest that if your neighbors are upset by the noise their dogs are making when you walk, maybe they should consider keeping their dogs inside. 

If these dogs are tethered 24/7, or kept in the yard with no shelter, I would give animal control a call. You don't say where you live, but in my state "shelter" is defined as three walls and a roof.

Of course, having your neighbors' dogs taken by animal control won't endear you to them, either. This is a tough situation, and I'm not certain there's a solution. Perhaps someone at animal control or the police department would have suggestions about how to deal with this - keeping the peace is their job...
 
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Esther Strom
Visit my Etsy shop: http://HookedByEsther.etsy.com

----- Original Message ----

  I am trying to figure out whether I should keep upsetting neighborhood norms where I live. I walk my bassets three times a day.  Walks take maybe 20-30 minutes.  I do not walk before 8 AM or after 9 PM in order to be considerate to neighbors.  I always clean up after the dogs.  They do not make a sound.  We do tend to mosey along slowly, as the boys like to sniff, occasionally go flat basset, and I am on the far side of middle age, with arthritis.
    Here is the problem.  Every house in my neighborhood has at least one dog; some have as many as eight (ten per household over 4 mos. of age are legally allowed in our state before one has to apply for a kennel license).   However, I am the only person within 4 blocks square who walks her dog.  The others are all tethered or confined and do not leave their yards. This is the norm.  Needless to say, when we walk by, a cacophony of barking
 erupts as we pass some of the other houses, although it does not last long and I have not really thought it a problem until recently.  (Nuisance barking is legally defined here as ten consecutive minutes, or thirty intermittent minutes at a stretch).
    Two different neighbors have asked me not to walk my dogs at all anywhere in the neighborhood.  I do not usually have access to a car, so it is not usually possible to drive my dogs out of the neighborhood to a welcoming spot (like the dog park 12 miles away) to exercise us all, and there is no route that bypasses all of the other barking dogs.   I do vary my route so as not to pass any one house more than once a day, and do respect daylight hours.
    Even so, a couple of days ago one of the complaining neighbors came out to scream at me at length about "loitering" along the street, "disturbing everyone", and added a few unfortunate invectives
 about my skin color and gender.   My pointing out to her that my dogs were not making a sound (while hers were) did not help matters.  I came home shaking and have been a little fearful of walking the dogs since, although I do not really think we are in any actual danger, but my emotions are shook. 
    I apologize to moderators who rejected my initial post, written just after the incident, which was overly--well, whatever--expressive of some of my opinions about having been on the receiving end of the verbal abuse. 
    I honestly don't know what to do.  I do not think simply caving in to norms and stopping walking the dogs is the answer.  (One of my neighbors has done this).  So, what I am currently doing is walking in the direction away from the cursing neighbor's house (but this means passing the other complaining neighbor's house more than once).
    Any suggestions?  Thanks, Val