We live in a suburb area in Kanagawa. One of our neighbours’ house has at least five shiba inu, and the main problem is that they are barking super noisy early in the morning (like 6-7am) distributing our sleep.
We own a dog in the neighbourhood too, but this level of distribution is unacceptable. I’m surprised that our other neighbours haven’t done anything about it.
What would you recommend we can do about it? Drop a letter politely ask the owners to control the dogs?
8 comments
Dogs will be dogs and bark when they want. Some dogs get overly excited at things, like newspaper folks, post office folks, people walking and kids waking up. Also, to the majority of Japan, 6-7am isn’t early.
I doubt the issue is the owners simply haven’t realized 5 dogs barking in the morning is a nuisance. The only outcome from that letter will be animosity.
Some [past threads with advice](https://www.google.com/search?q=site%3Areddit.com%2Fr%2Fjapanlife+dog+barking).
If you can find a way to get the owners here to actually train their dogs, please send me a DM. Some of the ones in my neighborhood are little shits.
My theory is that it’s because they don’t socialize them until they’ve had their third vaccine, by which time it’s too late.
Had the exact same problem : 3 old dogs owned by a middle-aged lady. Went once and she seemed to ignore, had to call 区役所, they went to see here and it went better. As you pointed out, I feel that it’s because the dogs here are never out, never socially learn and become stupid. We are a big dog family in my home country (had up to 5) and we would never have accepted such a behavior from our dogs… Also thought the same about the neighbors : we were not the direct neighbors, how can they accept such noise ?!
Hmmm… I live in a suburb of Kanagawa and have 5 Shiba Inu dogs. You will recognize me as I am the guy standing on my front porch at 6-7 a.m. laughing at the sleepy gaijin.
Not really helpful, but this made me think of some close family friends of mine who have a very old shiba. I think it’s eyesight is pretty much gone and it can’t hear well. Whenever I stay at their house, it freaks out and barks all night long into the early morning hours. Makes sleep even with earplugs and headphones impossible.
Their neighbors have complained many times, and I suggested to them that there comes a point where you have to consider the animal’s well being, and that sometimes euthanization is the most humane course of action when the animal is suffering. I doubt anything will be done though. I’m sure its on its way out to doggy heaven soon. I have no idea if pet euthanization is regularly done in Japan though.
Of course, this is very different from your situation aside from annoying barking.
Edit: Downvoter seems to prefer animals suffering at the end of life.
I had this problem once. The solution was bottle rockets.
That sounds like my entire neighborhood, including my own yappy West Highland White Terrier. Unfortunately, there isn’t much you can do about it. Between screaming kids, barking dogs, and loudspeaker announcements from the city office beginning at 7 AM, this is the noisiest place I’ve ever lived in.
It drove me nuts at first but the Japanese people in the neighborhood, including my husband, just seem to take it all in stride. My husband won’t let me confront noisy neighbors because he said it will give us a bad rep in the neighborhood. I’ve mostly just developed the ability to tune it out. That and a pair of AirPods Pro with noise cancellation.