neil248

If you are the dog owner I would not worry about Gold Coast City Council as your animals will die of old age before they take any real action against you. Your best option is to ignore them or better still if you are nice to them you keep the second dog anyway or third or fourth as you can always say they belong to some one else and are not permanent especially if you register it at another address. It may cost you a lot of dollars in various fees but if you keep them sweet you are likely to keep the dog. Don't be an easy target and give in the permit for a second dog is available.

We actually moved house onto acreage partly because of multiple dogs constantly barking on a block less than 600m square next door to us in our previous house.

So called responsible owners leaving their animals in a small yard for long periods going out of their mind with boredom. The dogs obviously don't bark as much when the owners are at home so their limited brains can not see there is a problem.

When you are on the other side of the fence of these animals it is not much fun and as moving house with agents fees, stamp duty etc is around $30,000 your neighbours lifestyle choice can be a bit expensive if it impacts on you to any great extent.

The law regarding one dog on blocks smaller than 600m square is there to help protect the poor people who have to live next door even though it does not work in practice.

tracey.d

I sympathise with your case entirely. Barking dogs are a pain in the arse. The difference is when it was brought to our attention that one was barking we took steps to prevent that happening. We are now keeping him inside.

I also suffer from the barking dog thing. There's not only next doors but the 2 houses at the bottom of my garden. One has 2 dogs one of which barks a lot and the neighbouring one dog barks a lot too. There is also a dog somewhere over the road who is the same. The thing is one starts and it sets off a chain reaction.

My bigger dog doesnt join in thankfully. She only barks if theres a strange person hanging about. I'm not going to stop her from doing that and I'm sure the neighbours wont complain if she prevents them getting burgled. I don't worry about her but as I said, I have taken steps to prevent the chihuahua barking.

Nobody else round here seems to care about theirs barking.

I'm sorry you had to move.

I'm really not an unreasonable person although some who don't know me on here have chosen to judge me. I went and apologised to my surrounding neighbours and told them what I was doing to prevent it when it was brought to my attention. The majority said he wasnt actually a problem and some of the other dogs were worse.

neil248

Hi Tracey,

You seem like a caring person, it is unlikely that the officer dealing with your case actually wants you to lose your dog especially if you state your case well.

The impression we got in the case we had was that a licence would be given to next door for the second dog and the council were bending over backwards for the dog owners although it liked to take dollars off them for the privilige. This is inspite of several neighbours complaining about the nightmare large dog and visiting dogs also causing problems.

Don't give in to their letters etc too easily, the longer it goes on the less likely anything will happen and if I remember correctly ( I may be wrong) the
2nd licence would be refused only if your neighbours object.

For the record when asked we said we would not object to the second licence
as like every one else did not want any more problems with the neighbour than we already had and the second dog was not actually the problem. They were not complete bogans and did make some efforts to solve the problem although to no great effect.

Kija

I was horrified when I read this thread, how devastating to have your beloved pet taken from you this way, I let out a long sigh of relief when I read the above post, so happy you got him back!!