Upon hearing this, the next door neighbor apologized for his dog, not realizing what a nuisance he had become. The moral of the story is, before even considering other solutions, my friend decided it was best to go and talk to the dog's owner, politely and calmly. Who would have known that because the owner of the dog had a wife who was dying of cancer, he had totally zoned out in his mind that their dog was making a raucous outside. While all thought that this man didn't care about the noise from his dog, little did they know the pain the man was dealing with. Diplomacy may not always work, and you may eventually have to contact the authorities, but so many times we totally misunderstand each other.
Communication is a strange thing.
We think we know what someone is trying to say, but we could be way off. We all deal with so many problems during the day, it becomes not so much what we can see and hear, but what we can't. As we head off into the world each morning, we are the Diplomats of our home.