Noisy neighboring pitbulls

@mberigan Well, I love Dogs, but I am biased against Pitbull's. We live in a very large compound where Me and SIMBA, a Beagle Mix share one of the houses and my wife, my 98-year-old Brazilian mother, my wife's mentally challenged uncle and PANDORA, apparently a street mix, share another one.

So, for your situation I learned in the early days that the majority of dogs do not bark for nothing. When they first met, PANDORA (the young female) would attack SIMBA (the older wise male) with SIMBA only defending himself and not fighting back. Having gone thru the very, very difficult task of bringing SIMBA from the USA to Brazil, I was not going to lose him to a street fight. It became a habit that whether it was obvious to me or not, whenever SIMBA ran out of the house barking, I went after him so that I could possibly intervene if necessary. Dogs sense of smell is anywhere from 10,000 to 100,000 times more sensitive than humans. So, if a dog is barking it is most likely that they know what is going on, even if you don't see anything. Our neighbor has about 6 Bulls and SIMBA and PANDORA's natural instinct is to bark and herd them, so there is a lot of commotion on our property.

Before you banish the dogs to hell, I would attempt to find out WHY they are acting that way. It could be that there are strangers in the neighborhood and once you have the dogs sent away or worse, you will then have to deal with a more deadly situation. A Home Invasions from a worse challenger. You may then miss those Pitbulls.

Roddie in Retirement🕵

01/10/25 @mberigan.  It sounds like you've done everything that you can do.  Might as well let the police take care of it.  Relations with the neighbor are sure to suffer, but it sounds like they're close to rock bottom already, so not such a big deal.  Good luck.

Is there a noise bylaw that covers this ? For example certain things are not allowed after 10 pm, etc ?

Is she breeding them and selling them ? 

Report her to the RF for tax evasion, and  then report her to the equivalent of the SPCA, or civil health authority, for not being licensed and following guidelines, and then the prefeitura probably has laws she is in violation of as well, such as zoning. Having said all that I don't know your neighbour either, so, is she the owner or is she a renter ? Maybe an angle if she is a renter.

Roddie's point about having a free neighborhood alarm system is valid, however, none of us know the lay of the land on your street, so.........boa sorte.

IMHO pitbulls should be eradicated.

@mberigan

Our friend Iury bought the house next door and evicted his noisy neighbors. 😀

@mberigan

I don’t know what state you’re in but I’ve read in SC and MG states, pit bulls are not allowed. There’s a lot of bad dog owners in this world and Brazil definitely has its fair share of them. I hope you find a solution. I’m also not a fan of the breed. However, I’m not a fan of any bad dog owners as well.

@alan279

That made me laugh!! That is something Iury would do.... but ask him some time about his mom's Fila Brasileiro there in Ilhéus. HUGE but gentle.

I few other notes I've got on my situation:

1. She is breeding/selling dogs out of her residence.
2. I already shot a note to the council person that has an NGO for abused animals (no response).
3. I've never seen the prefeitura represent people's needs except for the big developers.
4. "Alarm systems" alert when something goes awry - except those broken car alarms that keep going off all night long. These dogs are NOT a good alarm system.
5. I've nothing against Pitbull Terriers with owners that know how to train them and give them proper attention.
6. I'm building a compilation of information in order to file a report with the police (not expecting much given previous interactions with them on a home break-in).
7. I'm quite aware that the "problem" generally isn't the dog but the owner.
8. I'm unsure if the current resident is owner or renter. I do have their name, however.

Say "Hi!" to Iury for me. In fact, send me a direct message with your Whatsapp because I have a question for Iury.

mberigan

@mberigan Good Luck! Please let us know how it ends.

Roddie in Retirement🕵

What a drag! I feel for you! We have a neighbor with three mixed but primarily GSD, one of which is out all night and barks all night. In sequences of 5. And there is really no reason for it, so I have to disagree that dogs always need a reason. The dogs around here just randomly set up a bark-a-thon, and it’s a free-for-all for a while. I think you’re on the right track with filing reports. Good luck. And maybe she will move to the country?

@sjpetzold And there is really no reason for it,...a dog’s sense of smell can be 10,000 to 100,000 times stronger than that of a human. And, they don’t just smell things stronger than we do, they smell them in an entirely different way – and it’s absolutely fascinating! Where a human might enter a home and smell a pot roast in the oven, a dog would enter that same home and individually identify every ingredient. They would smell the roast separately and distinctly from the potatoes, carrots, and onions. They’d smell the garlic separately from the pepper. They’d even smell the pot it’s cooking in!

I ALWAYS listen to SIMBA whether I can see trouble or not...and don't have a drink in the neighborhood, he can smell you a mile away.

Roddie in Retirment🕵

Good luck with the barking situation.  We left Brazil after 5 years in October, 24.  When we moved to Brazil I noticed that there were always dogs barking in the neighborhood and that never changed.  There was a dog near us who lived in the yard of an abandoned house.  The owner lived out of state and paid someone to feed the dog twice a week.  It is a sweet boxer who loves people.  Obviously he was neglected and the neighbors reported it multiple times.  Nothing changed.  The police came out but did nothing.  The dog is still there, I saw him a few weeks ago when visiting.  Thankfully neighbors stepped up and he gets visited daily and fed by many.  We adopted a puppy from a hoarding situation in Campinas.  A woman with mental illness who refused to separate her dogs or have them fixed (free of charge).  Again the police came out and as far as I know nothing has changed even though the organization that steps in removed many dogs from there and about 6 litters of pappies.  Across the street from that house are capybara's and they attack the dogs and the wounds get infected.  Some of the dogs were in such bad shape they had to be euthanized.  Maybe it varies by state but in Campinas, SP, I don't think anyone will step in because dogs are barking all the time.  As a side note, we moved to Brazil with a pitbull from the US.  A few weeks after we moved into our rental house we got an anonymous handwritten note in our mailbox.  It was in Portuguese and stated that we could only walk our dog with a muzzle on.  It said we probably thought our dog was not aggressive but that a lady in the neighborhood was attacked and hurt badly by a pitbull.  Well needless to say I did not put a muzzle on our dog but I did make sure to keep her on the leash all the time after that. 

Final note on our barking neighbors:

They've mostly quieted down, I'm guessing because the litter has been sold but also because the owners are also tired of their dogs. They scream at them regularly. I have a collection of interesting recordings (made from within my bedroom) of bad behavior on the part of the dogs (somebody got bit it seems) and on the part of the humans (they obviously have no clue as to training their pets).

Absolutely no "official" person or entity responded to my requests for assistance - minimally to find out what the local laws have on the books about animal mistreatment and about noise regulations (these supposedly exist).

But the noise hasn't ceased. It has merely changed over to weekend family parties that start in mid-afternoons on the weekends and usually get over by 3 a.m. This noise is obnoxious but not as nerve wracking as hour-after-hour barking.

I think that our neighbors are renters and also bad apples. They don't seem to be concerned about their neighbors. We can only hope that they leave.

mberigan