[Aliantha]

Here's the back story:

My neighbour had two huskies (dogs) who don't bark, which was great. We never heard a peep out of them. They were locked under the house most of the time (which I personally don't approve of but that's not the issue really).

Recently (about 3 weeks ago) one of the dogs died. They don't really know why. That left one lonely Husky.

Now, every day when they go off to work and school, leaving the dog alone it howls. Pretty much constantly. I'm talking probably 6 out of the 9 or so hours it's alone for. Please keep in mind as you read this that I also work from home so this affects my ability to concentrate.

A couple of weeks ago I called her at work to tell her and she was quite good about it. Glad I'd let her know etc. She suggested she might leave the dog in the house with the cats while they're all gone or some such thing. Anyway, something must have not worked out with that because the dog was back downstairs again pretty quickly (after 1 day). Howling.

I tried to be patient and haven't said anything else till last week (when I was really sick and all I wanted to do was rest...of course this was difficult when there's a howling dog a few metres away). Anyway, because I had no voice, I sent her a text message simply saying, 'the dog is still howling. Thought you'd want to know.' I got no response, and there has been no change.

So this morning I decided to go talk to her before she left for work. First of all I saw them all look at each other before rolling down the window of the car. There were no smiles or good mornings. Only attitude. Lines like, "what do you want me to do", "we've just lost one dog", "we're trying to fix it", "we're not going to get rid of the dog", all of which I already knew and was not suggesting anyway.

The issue is, I'm a pet owner and realize that other people's pets can be a nuisance sometimes, but usually it's fairly short lived. This has been going on for several weeks now, with no end in sight from what I can tell.

I'm really pissed off after the way she spoke to me this morning when I consider myself to be a pretty considerate neighbour and I was not mean to her in my tone or words at all. I understand she probably does feel bad about it, so goes on the defensive, but that's not solving the problem, or helping me feel any sort of compassion towards her.

What would you do if you were me?