The ways of Argentinians

Slash her tires.

Tell her to get a day job!!

To be honest, the neighbour problem sounds to me like people-problems more than Argentina problems and I imagine they could happen anywhere that people are living close together. Based on my own experience, I wonder if the dog problems are symptoms rather than the cause? We had a dog which did all those things and a vet's diagnosis - in our case, of diabetes - lead to a change of diet and twice-daily insulin injections but a happier, quieter and more continent animal. The sight never came back but a few changes around the house helped to restore a lot of the missing confidence.

Quote from serafina

I have been here 8 years and I am disappointed with myself about getting frustrated by some Argentinians' traits.

The background: we had the elder dog of a friend over for the weekend-ish (Thursday to Sunday). She is a 14 years old poodle and it was her 5th time here with us. She doesn't see well because of her cataracts and pees often (even indoor). Some may be due to stress (she used to pee at night) but some is due to age (now she pees inside even in front of us, despite taking her out 4 times a day).

Apparently, the dog now barks when left alone, so we received this note from a neighbor:

I am okay with the first bit. We obviously don't know she barked when left alone and it is good to know about it.

I am less okay with the "do something to make it stop" bit. I am prompted to go downstairs and slip a hateful note in reply.

What exactly does she thing we can do to make her stop? Cut her vocal cords? Kill it? Abandon it?

It doesn't look like poor word choice to me, but rather a quite spiteful remark. In 5 years here, this neighbor has interacted with us just to complain. She was complaining about the noise when we were renovating (re-flooring) because she works at night in a bar and needs to sleep during the day. What could we do? Call the floor guys to come at 9 PM, instead?! Would the other neighbors be happy this way, instead?

Did she think we were having a blast with the renovation works and trying to make them as long and expensive as possible?

In one other instance, I went to the building administration office to pay the expensas and the admin told me that "someone" has complained that we used the vacuum during the weekend. I reassured him that it is no fun to vacuum and that I keep it to a minimum. How long can I vacuum? 10 minutes at most. And certainly not in the wee hours of the day.

For the record, the dog was alone on Thu and Fri night 7:30 PM to 10 PM, only, so I can hardly believe she has been barking for three days because the rest of the time I was at home with the dog or aways with it.

The dog is now back with her owner but I still have evil thoughts about my neighbor. What would you do?

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I would just be glad that the dog has now been returned to its owner and leave it at that, quite frankly.

Barking dogs, particularly poodles and similar dogs of that size are a bloody nuisance. There's one across the road from us that yaps constantly and the noise goes right through me.

Next door they used to leave their dog alone all f**king day with barking from 0900 to 1800 constantly and we couldn't reason with the peasant neighbours at all. In the end I used to throw buckets of water over the wall in a direct hit and it shut the dog up completely without harming him. Perfect solution and I never told the peasants.

What you do about the neighbour is up to you, but do you really want a war of attrition with them?

Cars are the problem in our street. Many years ago we planted trees outside our property to give us shade. The husband and wife who live across the road regularly park their cars on our side even directly outside our front door. Sometimes leaving us nowhere to park out of the sun. How selfish is that especially as they used to have their own trees but cut them down.

Last week the husband parked his car outside the entrance to our garage. The missus phoned the guardia urbana and they came and had a word with him.

serafina , kidding aside, I agree with Splinter . In the end, you want to live in peace with your neighbors, so even though this woman doesn’t choose her battles, you’ll probably want to do so.

I also agree with bebopalula that this is not just a problem with Argentine people. For your amusement, I’m attaching this photo of a neighbor whose bldg backs up to our bldg’s courtyard. Without applying for any kind of permit, he had started building a deck on his (highly regulated) historic building. Someone in our building complained, and the city ruled that the guy had to remove the deck. As he started complying, 19 months later, he painted this hilarious editorial comment on his sunshade.

Moral of this story -

Neighbors: can’t please ‘em, can’t get rid of ‘em.

So, back to your situation - - If you can turn down your friend’s future dog sitting requests, that will go a long way. I love animals, but I, also, would go bonkers if I were trying to sleep, or work, or think, with incessant barking.

For now, what about a peace offering of medialunas*? It could make her more reluctant to complain about every little thing.

(*Just make sure they are in a sealed package, so she won’t think you’re trying to poison** her!)

(**Written after a weekend of watching BBC mysteries!)

I could understand her if the dog was with you 24/7/52 but as it's only a few times a year then I'd say it's a case of tough titty for her. In a Buenos Aires apartment it's a good bet she might have to deal with something far worse more regularly. I take it dogs are allowed?

Instagram won’t let me open. What’s happening in the video?

Quote from Rice

What’s happening in the video?

I'm not too sure what it is to be honest. Explain in detail serafina!!

Quote from UK Man

I'm not too sure what it is to be honest. Explain in detail serafina!!

They look like rubber dicks stuck to a window, but that's it.

Quote from serafina

As you may know, we have recently bought a new car. Hence, my husband went looking for a garage where to park it. The closest one had no availability and told us to come back next week. Which we did and we rented a fixed parking spot (cochera fija) for 12.400 ARS/month that had just fred. Our spot is between a taxi and a SUV similar to the one shown below.

From the first week we had the car, my husband started noticing dents in the rear door, facing the SUV. I thought those were just small scratches due to stones flying on the highway (he had just driven to Mar del Plata and back). However, the dents went up to three after he returned. And they are quite deep. You can see the red paint, the white coat and the grey metal at the bottom.

We realized it was the children's of our "neighbor" at the garage who opened carelessly their doors when we saw that the other car parked next to the SUV had a Floating Foam Stick to protect the car (see picture below - white car). We left a note to the SUV owner to say to be more careful as there were marks on our door. Their answer was to throw the paper at the floor and scratch our car using a key. We have two 50 cm scratches on the back (under the license plate) and one swirly scratch on the back corner.

The garage owners don't want to have anything to do with that and there are no cameras.

My husband is not taking this lightly and started returning the favor. I am appalled by all of this.

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Jeez!

Unbelievable that people can be so nasty and childish.

I know it's difficult to find parking but maybe you should find somewhere else? Or it may just escalate.

Bloody hell....$12500 a month!!

We used to overnight park ours at a place two blocks away. The missus still keeps her mothers old banger there and it's only $1500 a month. It's not a fancy place but as we've been clients for years we were able to get a private spot with no cars either side. So when we built our own garage we moved the MIL's car into our spot.

The bloke sounds a right bastard so I agree it would be best to find somewhere else.

Would it help to request a different parking space, or would the vandals simply follow you? Personally, I’d walk the four blocks and avoid further damage.

In New Orleans, we pay $165/month in a garage that is 4 blocks away, instead of the one half a block away that charges over $300/month. When we have groceries to unload, we drop them inside our building’s front gate before parking the car. It’s a bit inconvenient, but adds to our daily exercise and we quickly adjusted.

If it is a new car, doesn't it have a dash-cam that can be left in sentry mode when the car is parked and the alarms are armed? If it doesn't have a dash-cam, front-and-back systems which can be fitted yourself have become very affordable.