Working at home is something many people want to do for obvious reasons. After being able to work at home however, I found out there is one possible drawback: neighbors barking dogs.

At my last house I had two neighbors directly behind my house and each had large dogs. I had set up my back bedroom into an office and spent much of my day there. It didn't take long to find out that these two dogs were constantly barking while their owners were off at work. One of the dogs in particular barked every few seconds all day long. I guessed that the dog probably barked on average a bark per every two seconds which would mean around 18,000 barks a day! That sounds unrealistic, but I swear it is the truth.

The other dog didn't bark as much. Perhaps it barked only a few hundred times a day, but it was much louder and when they barked together it was not pleasant. This isn't how working at home should be.

So what I did was first go and talk to the neighbors. My thought was that I would not be angry when I talked to them because they were probably unaware that their dogs bark this much while they were gone. How would they know since they are gone? The dogs didn't bark like this when they were home after all.

Before hand though I found a website that had some products that help stop a dog from barking. There are several different types of products that help with this. The most common are dog barking collars. There are a few different types of collars also. Some emit an electric shock whenever a dog barks. A more sensitive collar sprays a mist solution at the dogs face when it barks. There are also various other products that stop dogs from barking.

I wrote the name of the website down on a paper and walked over to the neighbors house. When the answered the door I introduced myself with a smile and told them I work during the day at home. Then I added that they may not realize it but their dog is constantly barking while they were away.

One of the two neighbors immediately felt bad and apologized. I told them I felt bad for the dog as it seemed to be having anxiety or separation issues, but I also said it made it very difficult for me to concentrate while working. I then pulled out the piece of paper with the websites name on it and gave it to them while suggestions that there are easy and relatively inexpensive ways to solve the problem.

What eventually happened is one of the neighbors was very cooperative and I noticed a big difference with their dogs barking. Now, the other neighbor is another story. They were not cooperative and the dog kept barking as much as ever. What I did to combat this will be the subject of another article, because there are steps to take when the neighbor ignores your complaints.