Is this bullying? What would you do?

We moved from our home of ten years mid pandemic, it was rough, sudden. But our lovely lovely landlords wanted the house for their own son and so instead of seeing out the time we could there we worked really hard to get a new place.

We found a nice bungalow (countryside) and off we moved- me, Husband, two kids, three dogs and a cat.
I was really excited to go interview and delighted seeing inside our possible new home. The nightmare began, I had been given the wrong eircode and had pulled up outside the wrong house. This house was right beside our then house to be.

I sat down and chatted with the agent, talked about my family. We are a young family and due to medical conditions of our children we pretty much live carefully and quietly. Our son has a sensory dog he adores, I have a GSD and a female rescue mutt who I adore which we requested permission to have in the property. We agreed to a much higher damage deposit and provided many letters of reference.

In the middle of this interview the neighbour arrived to complain I had been given the wrong eircode. I'll call her "Karen" going forward. She also wanted to speak to the agent interrupting our interview because her brother wanted to buy the house and wasn't getting through to anyone. I was really thrown and definitely feeling a little nervous to have accidently parked outside the wrong house and caused such a big reaction before I was even offered the house.

Spoke to my own Dad who said I shouldn't take the house if offered, Dad's know things don't they!!! Why didn't I listen, God knows I should have listened. He said "if they wanted the house they won't want you in it. End of story" he says.

I was offered the house and to move in straight away. Karen walked by often in the early days, small friendly comments. You look too young to have a child that age, I smile....What age were you having her? Is husband the Dad...... Small but unsettling moments built and built.

We had our first person come to react to a "report" they had about us. No issues, didn't have any problems and left.. I hoped this was an error.

I meet her outside calling her dog "Mimi likes to chase rabbits. I haven't seen her in three days" Finds her dog in the field across the road and catches her.

I meet her outside and her daughter says "Your dogs are bold they are always barking in our yard at our dogs". She runs off down the road.

I see Karen passing the next day holding her dog we say hello, my son says hello and her dog growls and snaps at my little man which she laughs off. I warn my son to not touch the dog, not all dogs are the same as our dogs. She explains my two dogs are barking all night long and sitting outside her bedroom window.

I am confused, I didn't listen to my Dad when I should have but I listened to his advice to protect myself and before we settled in here I had cameras ordered to keep a track of our front & back yards.
This night I opened the window closest to her house and set a sound recorder app.

I bought muzzles for the dogs to wear at night, they do give the odd bark, it doesn't wake me, it registered as under 1 second in duration and after a week recording it averaged at under 20 seconds of one bark occurrences over an entire night at its worst. With the muzzle the sound came in under 40 db at its loudest registered. We are very conscious of sound in our house for medical reasons.

I had given my phone number to Karen and sent the usual nice texts explaining I appreciate her telling me and letting her know I had set up monitering as well as night time muzzling.

The camera showed they were not leaving their dog house area so most definitely not outside her bedroom window.

We didn't hear from her again, her dogs would visit often and leave little gifts in the front. On one of these occasions I introduced my two to him, a typical small dog he growled and nipped while my two kind of just accepted him. We fostered many dogs in their lives and they are very good to meet new animals and allow them to get away with bad behavior. They know how I expect them to be and were very good.

7 weeks go by, I think things are ok.


Fast forward I get a text to say my animals are out of control.. My cat is terrorising her cats, my dogs are in her garden all the time. I need to sort this out now, it's beyond ridiculous.

Half 7 on a bank holiday Monday, I'm up already (I've got young kids). I explain I'm sorry things are difficult, cats do roam and I've began feeding hers and my cat together so they have a positive association seeing each other. Things are not easy having a new neighbour after so long alone and if it helps I'm struggling too. I can't offer much more help for my dogs as I have a camera on them and they are not showing as leaving, I have an old tablet beside a cracked window and they aren't making the type of noise she is saying. I ask can she maybe send a video of our dogs in her yard (I'm hoping she might see its not our dogs!! If she tries take a pic or video). I’ve caught three foxes on camera setting off my light sensor, it may be foxes.

They are really cute!!! I finish my reply to say I was really shocked to read a text which was so aggressive and can offer no further help other than to hope we can adjust to each other in time and settle in nicely in the future.

She arrived on the door step a moment later fuming.
She was roaring and shouting, I told her she was acting threateningly and to leave, she spewed out a list of my infractions (I've got this on camera too)

We cut the lawn too often, my youngest child is always playing outside (it's a big backyard and we are a limited screen time family) my child is loud, his noises she says (my child has special needs and doesn't sound how a typical child does) my dogs are on the road all the time (but the camera can't see them ever do this, the front is fenced off and they are on camera at rear), in her yard, my cat keeps attacking her cats. I explain cats can be tough and give the example that one of these cats sprayed in my ensuite but cats will be cats so I cleaned it up and now don't open that window to keep him out. It's now not her cat, it's two stray cats. She doesn't own them so it's not her problem. I ask why she said they were hers just now and in the text earlier. She says she didn't buy them. She just feeds them?? I ask how she used such extreme language as “terrorising” if not hers. She shouts they are not mine.

I'm at a loss, she is quiet honestly screaming as morning walkers pass by. I'm mortified, I ask her to leave. She won't. I ask my husband to take over and I hide in the kitchen. She gets more angry, we are sooo noisy, the lawnmower is always on (Its a big lawn and takes 2hr 30 min to cut, I'm not weird I don't cut it early in the morning, it's usually after lunch when I start).

The dogs keep getting into her garden. Her dogs are never here and how dare your wife introduce your dog's to mine... They were in my garden, it's my responsibility to ensure my dogs are introduced and told what I expect of them. Her cats live on the front window here, I can't help this! We drive our car out too often. We don’t walk our dogs enough.

She won't leave, I go back out to ask her to go. My husband gets out his phone and says he will record this as this is "insanity Karen". She runs away. My porch camera has all this footage anyway but the phone coming out got her to leave.

I'm shaking, I've seen this kind of person on YouTube clips from America not ever in real life. This isn't something you expect in a rural rural area on a bank holiday Monday in the middle of a pandemic.

We try go about our day, later I have to run to town for supplies, as I pull out and go to drive on she jumps out into the middle of the road and screams that my dogs were in her yard today and unmuzzled, I try reply that I won't be muzzling the dogs 24 hrs a day when I have no knowledge they are leaving their own back yard. She screams again, there is a man doing ditch clipping just up the way, he stops to watch. I get so angry at this and I'm sick of it so I rise to her and tell her "I give zero f**ks" she says excuse me, I answer again "I give zero f**ks" she screams what did you say and a third time almost catharticly I reply saying each syllable slowly and precisely I give zero ****s- helped with my hand in a zero shape. She moves off the road and shouts big mistake as if she is Julia Roberts. She storms into her driveway and tells me she will report me. Great!!! I have been wrecking my Internet speeds for weeks downloading and saving all my camera footage, I don't have anything to worry about.

Within a week the ditch separating our back gardens is cut, she has gotten guys in to trim it back, enough so she can stare into what was a very private area. Her horse from the field behind us miraculously keeps breaking into the garden and destroying the lawns in huge big tufts.

I just keep my head down. The dog warden visits, he can't find our house so leaves a letter into another neighbour as their dog is often on the road (he's a lovely little guy and no harm to anyone)

Warden makes a second visit, she is ringing him constantly. He pulls in. No dog greets him, no barking, nothing. He knocks on our door, no dogs rush him and no dog barks. I am in hospital with my eldest in Dublin for her ongoing medical treatment. My husband is at home. Working from home like alot of Ireland right now. The warden tells us we may be fined for uncontrollable dogs, my husband brings him into the back where the two "demon dogs" are lazing, one in his house and the other on the hill of our yard with her Teddy dog toy cuddled up. Neither bark, they tell the dog warden hello. Let him give them rubs and go back to sleep. He explains there have been many many reports (we know who made these)

He can't find a fault, they are chipped, licenced and spayed+ neutered. They are not pups and have underwent training for good manners and to assist my son for his special needs. They are good dogs. Exactly what you hope for in an animal that moves in next door. We can't understand the hatred from Karen.

Karen has also been ringing my house agent, after xmas I get a call about my dogs who are out of control, Karen has threatened legal ramifications to agent for allowing a GSD into the house. At this point I'm just tired, we keep having various inspectors visit, be it litter/tv licence/warden.

We had the boiler break down and the work men went to the wrong house where she told them no-one by my name lived in this area, she has used my name in so many complaints I'm sure she could have directed them next door, it was freezing all week and she sent away the men who were going to fix our heating. Where two medically fragile children live. The men couldnt believe it when they came the next day and found us right next door. She had been so angry at them they went to the next job and asked for the office to ring me later for an eircode.

Lockdown has been the worst period of my life, it's been a series of awfulness.

Today after months of her horse destroying (we thought it was someone else’s and wanted to have at least some neighbours like us so never complained) the garden it came in this morning and nearly hit my son. I thought it was the house down the road who owned it so called over, I had been repairing the broken fencing but it kept being broken, I asked if they might be able to fix it. The young man who greeted me explained it was not their horse (I've videos of the horse). An hour later the husband of Karen our bully next door went down the back of our garden to the little area of ditch which has a hole into a mini forest. An area my son who has so little joy in life loves more than anything and instead of fixing where the fence broke and looks to have stood for years, he cut down trees and shoved them into the little area of heaven my son loves.

I walked down to ask why and he said I had given a warning about the horse and while he knows my son loves the area (it’s just a wide ditch of ours with maybe 5 trees where nothing really is at the end of our garden) he is doing what he has to do for safety.
I then realized they may have been cutting this fencing down to allow the horse into our garden, today he had a choice to put those cut trees where he has always had the fence or to punish a small child and justify it as safety.

I did say you could have chosen to block where the fence came down, this is clearly where you want the horse to go but have chosen this. I offered the use of a large panel fencing we have for his safety concern but this isn’t what he wanted. He saw a way to hurt us when previous lies couldn’t, through a vulnerable child. He set a scenario up (the fencing I fixed was cut which I also have photos and videos of, a person on our back camera seen just yesterday in the area and today the fence fell again nearly harming my son and giving this horrible man an excuse.

He doesn’t live next door but took great joy in his work, he paused for a second, looked me in the eye and asked “does this upset you?” before pulling another branch into place. My husband distracted my son while this was happening, no offer to fix the destroyed lawn just slashing and pulling of trees to block the ditch. It turns out the other neighbour who didn’t own the horse is sister to Karen. My dash cam recorded “my warning” which was me asking if it would offend anyone if I fixed where the fence came down as my son loves going under the trees but does not understand horses or how dangerous they might be if scared. This young man acted friendly and then turned my offer into a tool to steal from a child.

My neighbours are pillars of the community.

We didn’t report out of control horses. We didn’t scream at their front door, we didn’t complain as their dog growled at my child, pooed at our front door and peed on the kids bikes in the back. We don’t complain when Karen screams at her daughter’s next door while they cry. We have tried to live the best life we can here.

Ireland has the best people but it has a problem where pillars of communities are often bullies.

What I’ve found is you don’t make complaints and lies to the gardai though, the garda I’ve kept in the loop has told me he sees this a lot, people lie to many but she hasn’t made any complaint to them because it’s illegal to lie to the guards.

I want to hear from others and see what you think of what's happening here. Id love her to realize we see her for what she is and while its tough we are a happy little family making the most of our life.