A Neighbor Escalated From Annoying Boundary Crossings to Unhinged Harassment Targeting a Couple and Their Socially Anxious Dog
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Let’s be real, you don’t have to love all your neighbours. You don’t even have to like them. Because you buy or rent a house because you like it and you want to live there, not because you love the neighbours. But even though you might not have any particularly warm feelings towards certain folk you live near to, it’s still important that you treat them well – a smile or a wave when you pass in the street, and a polite response when they speak to you. And, it should go without saying, avoiding causing too much of a disruption or disturbance, particularly through the night.
The couple in this story have lived in their current home for three years, and during that time have established positive relationships with their neighbours and other folk in the neighbourhood. All except for one guy who move din recently. And since he arrived things have been going downhill – and he seems to have taken a particular dislike to them.
Read on to find out why.
What should I do?
My family and I are renters in an HOA community in Florida. We have lived here for about three years.
About two years ago, we started having some issues with a neighbour. We have a dog, a mini Goldendoodle, and at the time this all began he was one years old.
He has social anxiety because when he was a puppy he was attacked by a bigger dog, and he is scared of other dogs because of this.
We have a neighbour that likes to walk his dog in the neighbourhood and always wants his dog to be friends with our dog. Every time he walks his dog near our dog, our dog starts to shake and try and run away.
Let’s see how the neighbour responded to this.
The neighbour would always make slick comments about it. We explained the situation to him and he just didn’t understand and would say we need to train our dog better. We would just ignore him and let it slide.
This continued not every single day but four to five times a week. It got to a point where it seemed intentional: every morning at the time we take our dog out, there he is standing in our front lawn with his dog waiting for me or my wife.
He would sometimes follow us down the sides of the house trying to have his dog interact with ours. Eventually we said something to him and asked if he could not bring his dog in our front yard directly.
He responded with nothing but aggression, and said that this is the HOA’s lawn and he can go anywhere he wants. He even stated he was a retired NYPD officer, and if the cops came they would do nothing.
Read on to find out how this couple responded to his words.
After this verbal altercation took place we looked it up and saw that he is not allowed to be in our direct front yard, so we sent a letter to the owners that we rent from and they sent it to the HOA.
After this the guy disappeared – he wasn’t standing in our yard most mornings waiting for us, nor following us around the house or making any comments on how to train our dog.
We would occasionally see him walking his dog in the distance but he seemed to have started to leave us alone.
That is, until this morning.
Let’s see what happened to change things.
My wife takes out the dog and sees him walking in the street towards our house. She’s standing on the front lawn and the dog is doing his business.
The guy walks over and says that our neighbour doesn’t want our dog on her lawn, and that the neighbour on the other side doesn’t want our dog on their lawn either – and actually the whole neighbourhood doesn’t want us here and doesn’t like us (we are friendly with both neighbours to our left and right and know this is not true).
He then proceeds to tell my wife that we’ve opened a can of worms with the HOA, because he’s friends with them and they all hate us and don’t want us in the neighborhood. This ended in a huge screaming match between my wife and this neighbor.
We thought this situation had come to an end but this is now what’s going on.
Yikes, what a horrible guy.
Retired NYPD officer or not, this is no way to treat a family who are merely trying to protect their beloved pet.
And as well as telling lies, harassing and basically stalking this family, trying to force a scared dog to interact is not only a thoughtless thing to do, it’s potentially dangerous too.
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Let’s see what folks on Reddit made of this.
This person thought the guy was just trying to intimidate them.
While others encouraged them to get back in touch with the HOA.
If you enjoyed this story, check out this post about a community who realizes their mistake after restricting parking to residents only gets guests and delivery drivers towed.
Meanwhile, this Redditor thought they should start documenting his behaviour.
This guy seems unhinged and honestly, that’s not someone you want to be around. They put up with his stalking and harassment for a long time, even though he was repeatedly insulting about their dog and repeatedly putting them in uncomfortable situations. So it must have been a real relief when his behaviour stopped. So much so that when it returned, along with an added touch of gaslighting and intimidation, this couple must have been really upset – as well as confused and distressed about his remarks.
Honestly, the fact that he stopped for a while seems like he got a clear warning from the HOA, one that he had to abide by – but was clearly upset about. He couldn’t take that someone complained about his behaviour, and ultimately decided to get revenge in the way he knew best – by antagonising those people more. It’s a totally unfair way to behave to anyone, but if you want to have a good relationship with your neighbours, outright bullying isn’t the way to do it. But let’s be real, this guy doesn’t care about good relationships, he just wants to be right.
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