The Council and Buddy

My neighbour - I'm not sure if I want to use neurotic, or toxic - over the back has complained to the council about Buddy barking. 

So, I met with the nice man from the council. He said he'd come in the morning. He arrived at 9am. My mate Anthony and I laughed about it later, 
"Who arrives at 9am," said Anthony. "It is inhuman, for god's sake."

Buddy ran to the door before I could stop him. I mean, not that I really wanted to stop him exactly, but the doorbell rang and he was gone and I was left running after him. He can be a bit of an excitable puppy with new people at the door and I wanted him to be on his best behaviour, of course.

He was at the door wiggling with his little tail wagging, when I got there. I opened the door, thinking hear we go, and Buddy stepped out on to the front veranda and greeted the nice man from the council, with his cutest bulldog face.

"Hello, you're beautiful," the man said. He looked at me and said, "He didn't bark then."

"No," I said. "He doesn't bark alot."

I gave the council guy my story. He was just following procedure, as they have to. We sat in the lounge and the Buddy won the council man over with his adorable bulldoggy ways.

He showed me her log. I showed him my log. My log contradicted her log on several days. She'd put down that Buddy had barked for minutes on some days when I knew he'd barked 6, maybe 8 times. He was asleep on my bed in my room on one occasion that miss neurotic said he barked. I disputed the five minute sessions she claimed he barked for.

"I don't think bulldogs can breath well enough to bark for 5 minutes straight."

We both laughed.

"Essentially, we are only interested in dogs that bark incessantly, or continuously. We are not interested in dogs just being dogs, we understand that dogs do bark. Her log itself shows us that he didn't bark for 4 days at all. We are not interested in pursuing this case. We sometimes have to speak to people about the reality of living in the inner suburbs and we think this may be one of those cases."