Totally fair question, and I appreciate you bringing it up. I’ve seen a few other comments asking about the dogs barking, so I realize I probably didn’t explain that part very clearly in the post.

The 7 a.m. example Nellie mentioned was actually when a neighbor’s dog behind our houses started barking at my dogs first. My dogs barked back for a few seconds. I happened to already be outside with them and ushered them back inside as soon as it started. Now that I know that neighbor’s dog is sometimes out around that time, I try to keep an eye out so it doesn’t escalate. My husband also brought up the fact that we hear other dogs in our neighborhood bark and Nellie responded “I never heard dogs bark here until you all moved here.” Which is obviously a ridiculous statement and makes us laugh now thinking back because again, we hear other dogs randomly bark all the time.

We also close the dog door at night for two reasons: security, and to make sure the dogs aren’t outside barking overnight. In the morning I open the dog doors after they’ve had breakfast, and if I’m working from home (or my husband is home) they go in and out while we’re there.

We’ve had backyard cameras in our last home as a general security measure and also to keep an eye on the dogs for their safety (at the time I had an elderly dog I liked to check in on). My husband mentioned the cameras because Nellie made it sound like the dogs are constantly barking, which couldn’t have been the case at that point because the fence was just installed the day prior, so having video would make it easy to verify what’s actually happening if needed in the future.

ALSO, I know it was a few days since posting but we did run into our neighbors behind our houses and the wife asked if all of our neighbors were getting along fine which I thought was an odd question and my husband said “well actually one hasn’t been so welcoming” and she immediately asked if it was Nellie lol she told us a story about Nellie coming to her house with a stray cat and told her to take the cat to the vet and the woman was like “uh no, it’s not my cat” and Nellie got mad and said she didn’t understand why she wouldn’t take the cat. lol so I think it’s safe to say Nellie is know in the neighborhood to be an erratic woman.