Barking up the wrong tree

All of the houses on our block have dogs, and all the people in the houses haven't learned the value of keeping their dogs quiet. Therefore, there is almost always a dog on our block barking. Sometimes, they all get together and bark. I don't mind this so much during the day, because I'm not here, but at night it's unbelievably obnoxious. Last night, a dog was barking when we went to bed at 11:00 pm. At 2 am, he was still barking. I put earplugs in. They fell out around 5 am (I think I toss a lot at night because my earplugs always fall out) and the dog was still barking. I found the earplugs, put them back in, and the dog was miraculously not barking when we woke up at 7 am. I guess maybe the dog's owner took him out for a walk so he could bark in another neighborhood for a while.

We have called Animal Control in Minneapolis. Apparently, if a dog is barking for more than 5 minutes straight, you can call Animal Control and complain. If this happens three times in a row, Animal Control will step in and do something (I'm not sure what...). The problem is, in order to file a formal complaint you have to 1) know which dog it is (and in our neighborhood, I'm not going to go out at 2 am and wander around trying to figure out which dog is barking) and 2) you have to record it barking for the whole 5 minutes. That would have been easy last night, but I suppose I would have to hang around outside with a tape recorder to get a good recording, and that would suck for a variety of reasons. So basically, I don't think we'll ever get it together to complain. Somebody does complain every once in a while though, because there's an entire call center at Animal Control that's set up for dealing with complaints. Maybe in the summer it's easier.

I have had dogs. It is not that hard to keep them from barking. You go outside and get them, and bring them in. They may bark occasionally, but I have never had a dog bark for the entire night. And I grew up in the country where it doesn't matter if your dog barks all night. So I wonder, what is the matter with these people that live in a densely populated neighborhood and then let their dogs bark all night? It's keeping the whole neighborhood up. Are they deaf? Do they really sleep that heavily? My studly hubby could sleep through a train wreck and was woken up last night by this dog, so I honestly doubt that possibility.

Aaaaah, the dog is barking again. Excellent. Maybe tonight I'll go out and buy a tape recorder.