And so say all of us...........

This sums it up so poignantly I think, plus the little piccie I added:

Some people just do not get it. Everyone has varying degrees of tolerance, some of my neighbour's tolerance levels are so low, if an ant were to fart in my back yard the virulent whiners would send an anonymous complaint into council. To make matters worse they did not know, that we knew they made the complaints. Now they know we know they made the complaints - ha ha. Things have deteriorated to such a degree the Council were not going to pursue the dog complaint made by the virulent neighbours, well at least until we challenged them to investigate, and if they had enough information. Finally I believe the council is starting to realise that the dogs are not incessant barkers or disturbing the peace. The laws are there to pursue owners of persistently barking dogs not the occasional barker. You know the ones that bark all night or for extended periods not say thirty seconds. Nor is "reasonably disturbing the peace" an easy one to get either. The dogs may annoy someone with an extremely low tolerance of all canine and canine friendlies but a normal person would approach the offending neighbour directly. If I approach them to discuss if they had a complaint or were annoyed - response "they are a bit noisy sometimes". Unfortunately did not have the gumption to admit or deny making a complaint nor discuss what was annoying them. Well they would if they had any intestinal fortitude.After being subjected to these frivolous complaints and pestering of the council officers have taken matters into our own hands and forcing mediation. So how do you make a complaint to council to ensure they will harass a responsible dog owner? After suspecting that someone was attempting to cause the dogs to bark from time to time we have finally caught them out. Yes that is correct if the dogs do not bark enough to make a complaint nor for the council to make a conclusive finding go out of your way to make a dog bark so you can note the times they barked and lodge a diary with the council. Throw rocks into the back yard to stir them up. Bang on the fence everytime the dogs are asleep - that will help. Annoy your dog owning neighbour after you have conditioned the dogs to barking at the noise by doing a lot of banging and thumping near the fence line until the dogs bark. When the responsible dog owner calls the dogs away stop the noise. Note the duration of the noise by entering discrete events on the minute. When they relax thinking the dogs are settled - start up again. But do not forget to make your notes in a diary for submitting into the council. Make sure you slam every car door when leaving the house - even if you are the only person traveling. If all that is not enough, note down times that other dogs are barking in the nearby properties and report against the owner you wish to make a complaint about. Make wild and unsubstantiated claims about the impact upon you. ie how it restricts the natural enjoyment of your privacy or peace in the yard or house.Why bother go to such extraordinary lengths when you can just fabricate times the dog barks and triple the length of time the noise occurs. Fill out a diary for each of you neighbours as well, if you have not already convinced them that the dogs bark too much and to submit a letter at least. But be careful here your other neighbours may just have dogs that are the noisy barkers, or own a rooster that crows at 4:00am in the morning. In other words make sure you are squeaky clean. What will happen? Well the Council will conduct an investigation and witness the neighbours dogs barking while the responsible owner's dogs are silent. Oops!!! Also make sure the diaries actually line up as well and the dogs are actually in the yard - will look suspicious.Make sure that you and your collaborators take turns to string the complaints out over a lengthy period - say 8 months to make the Council think that there is a serious problem.When you have gone to all these efforts to put forward such a good case for continued harassment of a dog owner - how frustrating it must be when a responsible (or not responsible depending upon your perspective) dog owner that has allowed the dogs to bark for awhile to bring the complaints to a head - and just when you think you have the council on side the alleged barking suddenly ceases!!!! Damn that would hurt.
Well trained dogs are such a joy.