Handling Noisy Neighbors

< id="_npwlo" ="applicationpwlo" height="0">We started our annual 5 night camping trip on Green Bay on Saturday. The campgrounds was full.  We had reservations so that was no problem.  Sunday folks started to empty out the campgrounds and we expected the remaining days would be nice and quiet. Sunday was.  Monday after noon, in came a truck camper with an older couple and 2 dogs next to us.  An hour later in came the rest of the family (to the same site) with another car, motorcycle, 2 more dogs, a tent, 2 adults and 3 grade school boys.  They set up and literally filled up the site with stuff, people and 4 little dogs.  Monday and Tuesday the people, including the young boys were very quiet and good neighbors, except for the dogs.  Every time someone walked by the dogs barked and occasionally the dogs had disagreements among themselves and they barked.  We said nothing Monday and Tuesday trying to be good neighbors.  On Wed, however, everyone but one person left.  The older gentleman went in to take a nap and the dogs began to bark for 20 minutes straight.  By then I decided I needed to salvage the day we had left so I knocked on the camper door and politely said “we have listened to your dogs bark for 2 days could you kindly control them”.  He immediately said Yes!!! And I walked home.   The remainder of the day there was barely a peep out of the dogs which leads me to believe they were just used to the noise. 

 

What would you have done and when?

I think you handled it correctly. We travel with two small dogs and if you don't stay on top of them they will bark. They are in a strange place with strange people they don't know where their territory is and sometimes there are strange dogs. All it takes to to control most dogs is a firm word from their master. If my dogs were acting up I would want people to handle it the way you did. Tell me and I will look after it. 

I would have not waited that long to confront them.  Years ago, maybe, but not anymore.  I am so tired of someone else's behavior infringing on my opportunity to have a nice and relaxing time.  I absolutely despise dogs at campgrounds.  Everyone thinks the world just loves their little monsters as much as they do.  Guess what?  They don't.  And for all you of you who think your dogs are good and quiet when you're gone, guess what?  Most of the time, they are not.  They started barking as soon as you left and got quite just as you pulled back into your site.  You don't know this because 1) you're not there while they're barking and 2) most people don't have the balls to approach you when you return to tell you how obnoxious your animals were while you were gone.   And before anyone asks, no, I'm not at the campground to make any friends.  If it happens, fine, but it's not my primary intention of camping.

One of the reasons that we enjoy camping so much is that we can take our dogs with us.  We rarely leave them in the pod, and when we do they are in their kennels and quiet.  We kennel trained them from puppy on, and they will not bark when in the kennels.

P.S. Keith and Dar, you are my kind of campers, I hope to be next to you guys sometimes, we can all get get together and have a good quiet time.