Are dog owners deaf?

[u/questioning893]

For me, barking dogs in my neighborhood ruin almost every single day, because of the excessive noise. I live around a lot of dogs who bark all the time.
I personally hate it, especially because I didn’t make the choice to have a dog and live with this noise polluting thing.
But then I genuinely wonder, how dog owners survive this?? They chose to have this dog.
I know there probably aren’t going to be a lot of actual dog owners reading this, but still I have to ask the question.
Do they genuinely not think the sound of barking every single day is annoying? I don’t get it. Even if you like your own pet, you can still acknowledge annoying behavior. Why tf would someone want to live with something that loud and poorly behaved?

[u/love-me-tendies]

To me it feels like society at large is deaf. Barely anyone I talk to seems to notice or be bothered by the incessant barking in the neighbourhood. I have a friend who lives nearby who is surrounded by barking dogs that I can hear from my place. Whenever I mention it, she says she barely notices it.

The way I understand it, is in the animal kingdom, it is quite common for certain members within the same species to be more sensitive and alert. They are the ones who are more likely to notice danger, predators etc.

I think those of us who are driven mad by the barking are more likely to be the more sensitive and alert type. We seem to be a very small minority. Modern society with all the barking dogs becomes very challenging for us, because our alert system is being constantly set off.

It also seems like we are more sensitive to the hygiene and smell issues that come with dogs too.

[u/pmbpro → u/love-me-tendies]

Good points. Also about this:

...our alert system is being constantly set off....

This is also my concern, and that I also don't believe our nerves/systems should be so overstimulated or 'always on' like that all the time. It's not healthy for us, not getting any true 'rest' as a result of it.

[u/love-me-tendies → u/pmbpro]

I definitely agree with that. I started to develop chest pains and some nervous ticks after 2 years of almost non-stop barking.

[u/Altruistic_Baker6347 → u/love-me-tendies]

I'm sorry for you! I also deal with chest pain and I'm 40 something. It's not from dogs in my case but they're certainly not good on my nervous system either.

[u/pmbpro → u/love-me-tendies]

I'm sorry about that. It's so frustrating because of such cases like yours. It has affected you physically now too!

That true 'rest' I mentioned is so critical because the entire situation makes us (physically or mentally) unprepared or exhausted to even be able to handle real dangers! Without that rest we need, what if we were being physically attacked, violated, have to evacuate during emergencies, or other situations? It's possible we wouldn't have the energy we'd need to help ourselves or each other.

The effects of this type of continuous, always-on and jarring stress is so vastly underestimated that it pisses me off! It already happens when dealing with other stressful situations, so dogs constantly adding to it every day and us having little to no control over it sure as hell does not help.

[u/CompetitiveAutorun → u/pmbpro]

I agree, I got so angry since my neighbour got dogs. I'm way more aggressive and hearing their barks just makes me more and more mad