It is not uncommon to live next door to the same neighbor for many years, and when that neighbor causes trouble, it can be very difficult.

What would you do if your neighbor acted like he could do anything that he wanted at all times? And If that included things like letting his dog in your yard, driving in your yard, and even using a flamethrower that put the whole neighborhood in danger?

That is what the couple in this story is dealing with, and they really don’t know how to put up with this long-time neighbor anymore.

Personally, I think they need to document and record everything possible and then work with whatever relevant agencies or police can help. Read through the full story below and see if you agree.

Fences, Dogs, Basic Considerations and Common Sense

Backstory. United States. Pacific NW area. Our neighborhood is older, built in the 70s. Each house has probably about 1/4 to 1/3 of an acre of total space, most backyards are modest but, more separated from the other homes than the new style builds now, being so close together.

This seems like a pretty normal setup so far.

Our fence to the left belongs to one neighbor and our fence to the right belongs to the other. Our back fence to close the yard in was built by us.

In our state/county in the US, the person who builds/owns the fence is responsible for maintaining it and or repairs or replacing. The person building the fence also would have the “finished/nice side” facing outward (this becomes important later).

The neighbors need to control their dog.

We have a medium sized dog, and the neighbor has two large dogs. His dogs are very aggressive and will take a running start and try to bash the fence in, in an attempt at getting to ours.

It is a daily occurrence. When his dogs are let out, they immediately start growling and ramming into the fence, until one of their humans tells them to stop (IF they tell them to stop). I stress daily about them getting into the yard and attacking our pup.

If the dogs get through, it is going to be very dangerous.

It’s gotten bad enough that the fence panels on his side have taken some serious damage over the years and my partner has had to reinforce our side with panels of wood, boards, objects in front of the fence to hold it up, etc. It is falling over in spots towards our side and wind storms have not helped the stability.

My other half has done repairs on our side for years and has asked the neighbors if they are planning on repairing their fence, noting the safety piece…Now it’s become a dog issue and could cause more problems if his dogs make it through the fence and get to ours.

Finally, he is going to fix it up.

Each time, he has told us “ya, I know, I’ll get to it” or “uh huh, ok, I know”. Very dismissive. My partner has also offered to take on the job of replacing it completely himself, since he knows how to build things and has already built our fence and deck by hand. No response. Just being scoffed at and his dogs continue to bash in the fence.

Yesterday evening while sitting outside we heard loud banging and what sounded like a saw. We noticed that the neighbor was taking down one of the broken panels and doing the repairs (finally).

Better than nothing, I suppose.

So, using our brains, we kept our dog inside the house. Also to note, while he’s working outside, his own two dogs are right there next to him with free access to run into our yard. Nice, right? What a great guy.

We let him do his thing and go outside later to see that yes, he *did* replace some fence panels, but they don’t match the fence currently in place, AND, it’s facing the wrong way (finished side toward him, “ugly side” toward us.🤦🏼‍♀️ Not our problem I guess, so we finished out the night atleast knowing there was a good barrier now keeping the dogs separated (finally!)

He is repairing even more of the fence, but he isn’t keeping his dogs on a leash.

This morning we get up and we find that our yard is now WIDE OPEN and there are TWO more panels taken out completely. Great, good for you for finally getting around to fixing your fence.

Here’s the thing. Common sense tells me that if you and your neighbors have dogs, wouldn’t you want to give them a quick heads up so there are not any issues with dogs attacking each other? Seems pretty easy to do, right? That isn’t difficult. It’s actually fairly routine, COURTEOUS behavior.

The neighbor really is a jerk.

Well, I didn’t even know he had opened up the yard until I went to let our dog outside this morning and, SURPRISE! No fence and 100% open access to his dogs! Also, what if we were planning on having company over and sitting outside? Same deal. Common sense says, just give your neighbors a quick heads up! It is NOT that difficult!

As of right now, the neighbor has decided to go inside. No idea when he’s planning on finishing his job. Now anytime our dog needs to go out (into our own yard), we have to put a leash on her because our neighbor apparently thinks he doesn’t need to communicate, or keep his own dogs in the house?! Apparently he owns both yards now 🤷

He has no respect for their property.

Additionally, he is piling up his tools, boards and trash from his fence job, in OUR YARD by our sheds, using it as what appears to be his staging area?!?!

This morning, he also tried to back his pickup truck up into OUR YARD, going around OUR CARS parked in our front area and pull up ONTO OUR GRASS front yard to drop his supplies where he removed his panels.

What is he even thinking?

My partner went outside and told him, you can’t do that, you need to use your own yard, you didn’t even talk to us! He just went on about his project like nobody said a word to him.

To note also, his fence goes all the way down between the houses, so when I say he tried to back up onto our property, I literally mean he tried to drive up and over our front yard, not his yard or adjacent to or anywhere part of his property.

He tried driving up ONTO our front yard, around our cars and up against our side of the fence, using our grass and yard as his parking and staging since he had removed panels on his side.

Honestly, a flamethrower for weeds? That does sound fun.

This same neighbor also owns a flamethrower that he uses to torch weeds and brush along the fence line and in his yard.

A few summers ago he started a tree on fire in his backyard. He was using his flame torch to blast out a nest of hornets that had settled into a large opening in the base of this fir tree.

This would be terrifying.

The flames were wicking, the hornets were on fire and flying up into the trees. This went on for THREE hours until the smoke became too much and he switched to using the garden hose.

We were on pins and needles just waiting to call 911 as he was being so reckless and wasn’t paying any attention to the overhead tree limbs and the very real possibility of starting a forest fire since our homes back up to the woods and most of the homes have large evergreen trees in their backyards or just behind them.

What a horrible neighbor.

This year alone, he has started fire to the fence, started fire to the grass between our yards, and, hes started fire to another owners fence when he offered to help them (elderly) clean some things up.

In doing so, he burned down two of their fence panels and instead of handling it, he pieced together the burned parts he ruined with parts of wood and boards from his own yard, leaving this person with a ruined fence and a lackluster repair!

He is a menace.

He doesn’t care to pay attention to the fact that the entire PNW is under a BURN BAN either! Every summer our area has massive wildfires and we are not allowed to burn.

The scorched section he damaged last week is now BLACK out in front of the water meter/hydrant area.

Maybe the person from the city can stop him.

When the city came out to do their testing of the water meter like they do bi weekly, they came to OUR door knocking asking what happened as the area around the meter and hydrant belongs to the water company/city and neither we nor the neighbor are supposed to be anywhere near it as its not our property to touch.

My partner told the rep checking the water meter what happened and pointed them in the direction of the neighbor since he’s the one using the flamethrower to maintain his yard.

The neighbor thinks the world revolves around him.

That is my only hope that something, ANYTHING will be done about him. I am just crossing my fingers that he gets slapped by the city or the fire district now that they’ve seen the damage he does 1st hand 🤦🏼‍♀️

I don’t know who this guy thinks he is? He seems to think that because he has lived in this neighborhood for 40 years he somehow can do whatever he wants without speaking to anyone else or communicating first.

He is clearly never going to change.

We also OWN here and have been here for seven years, we aren’t young either, we are middle age adults with grown adult children of our own. He seems to have this superiority complex because he’s one of the originals that bought here. I just don’t get it.

We do not have an HOA, that’s one of the reasons we bought here. Affordability and lack of HOA, but now part of me is regretting the no HOA piece and I have no idea what to do about this guy who has such a lack of care for anyone else, that he won’t even have a conversation with people before doing construction that could impact others.

Wish me luck today because who knows how long the yard is going to be wide open now that he’s so considerately decided to fix his fence.

This neighbor truly is a nightmare. The family needs to put up cameras, document everything, and work with the city (or the police) if he continues to do things that are dangerous.

Read through the comments below to see what other people have to say about this story.

This commenter says to just build their own separate fence.

They should have called the fire department already.

This commenter recommends documenting everything.

Communication isn’t the biggest issue here.

If you enjoyed this story, check out this post about a couple who is sick and tired of their neighbor’s kids dumping trash on their patio.

Putting up their own fence is a good idea.

It is time to stop worrying about being friends and start involving the authorities. This guy seems to be a danger to himself and everyone around him.

There is no reason not to report his behavior to the police or fire department in order to get it to stop.