I had a neighbor in a fourplex who complained to the landlord about my dog barking "all day." She worked from home and claimed my dog constantly barked. Constantly.

I knew this wasn't true, and I was also Not Happy that I'd moved cross-country just to deal with this bullshit. I'd heard exactly one noise complaint about my dog back in Brookly, from the very first day I'd left her alone in my apartment. She was too short to see out the windows and didn't react to noises in the hallway; the only time she really barked was when I was there and someone came inside.

But no, my neighbor insisted, my dog was barking ALL DAY, and she couldn't work. My landlord told me about the complaints. I asked for some time to gather some data, because this just didn't sound right. I not only asked the downstairs neighbor if she heard anything (nope), but I bought some time to do some training, consult a behaviorist, and start running a voice-activated recorder.

Do you know how much cumulative time my dog barked or made noise that set off the recorder per day? About five-ten minutes. That included her reacting to my dogwalker coming in. Do you know what else I heard on the recordings?

My neighbor's boyfriend, who was not on the lease, teasing my dog through my door and making her bark. I caught him at it once while I was doing laundry and pounded on the wall to let him know I heard him. Even so, I almost got evicted over this -- they actually served me papers, but it turns out my lease didn't allow them to terminate my lease over this; the most they could do was kick out my dog, but they had to give me notice and an attempt to cure, but they hadn't since the first round of complaints had (I thought) been resolved. Apparently, the new property manager had been getting complaints from them and not passing them on to me, and his boss tried to evict me based on that. It was a fun meeting when she and I were screaming at each other and I brought up that she couldn't do anything without notice and she realized that he hadn't notified me and she hadn't checked. All the wind went out of her sails. They still wouldn't let me out of my lease early, but I never did hear another peep out of my neighbor.

Oh, and the "all day" barking? That was a dog in a house a couple doors down who was left out in the yard all day instead of snoozing happily on my bed. And who was there making noise before I moved in.