I’m not sure what to think anymore, as we’ve been told we are the bad neighbors through all of these issues.

We moved into our home in 2022, so we’ve been here a little over 2 years. Initially all of the neighbors around us were very friendly and welcoming; they would invite us for future BBQs, offer to watch our dogs, and even invite us on their boat.

We have two small dogs and one of our next door neighbors also has a small dog. When we moved in we got one of those electric fences that isn’t in ground but emits a radius from a device inside. We found out that we had the same system as NDN, so we talked to him and we both agreed it would be fine to combine the fences so all of our dogs had more room and could play with each other. This meant our dogs could go into his yard and his dog into ours; this worked very well for about a year.

Last year, our next door neighbor’s son (early 20s) moved back in with him. I would notice our dogs barking at him when they were outside, but never saw any aggression as they are not aggressive dogs. NDN never mentioned anything about the barking or any issues with our dogs.

I was outside one day with our dogs when NDN’s son came outside and our dogs started barking at him. He yelled at me “you need to keep your dogs out of our yard, this is the third time I’ve been bitten and your dog ripped my pants.” I was surprised, but immediately went inside and told my husband; we immediately changed the radius of our electric fence so our dogs could no longer get into their yard at all. I also apologized to NDN’s son and sent him money for his ripped pants. Again, they never mentioned any of this to us up until this point. If they had mentioned it earlier, we absolutely would have moved the fence sooner.

After this incident, we ended up having a physical fence built in our backyard so our dogs could have room to run around. The new electric fence radius was maybe 5 ft, so they didn’t have much room. The neighbors on our other side kind of took offense to us building the fence because they liked the open feel of our backyards together. They asked why we were building it, and we were honest and just said “our dogs and NDN’s son don’t seem to get along”. Looking back now I realize we should not have said this, but we weren’t trying to be malicious or gossip by saying that.

All of this happened about 6 months ago. Fast forward to now, we have had issues with NDN and his son driving through our yard (there is about a 6 ft wide patch of grass between our driveways) when they don’t want to move one of their cars. They drive through the grass and out through our driveway. This has happened at least 10 times or so in the past two weeks. We also saw NDN’s son moving dirt back along our fence and kicking it down our hill, which broke part of our fence.

My husband was angry with these issues, so texted NDN and confronted him. NDN said to “come talk to him like a man”, so later that evening we went and knocked on his door. NDN came out and immediately got into husband’s face yelling at him. Husband said “can you step back you’re getting aggressive”, NDN said “get the fuck off my property” so we went to our driveway. He followed us there and husband kept saying “will you stop driving through our yard” and NDN said “I will drive through your yard whenever I want” and then proceeded to tell husband he will “knock his fucking teeth out”.

We made a police report but asked them not to come out so we didn’t make things worse.

What would you do in this situation?

UPDATE:

my husband came home from the driving range tonight as NDN and son were pulling in; we have ignored them since Sunday night when this happened. Son flips off my husband, husband starts recording audio on his phone. NDN calls me a whore for being pregnant to my husband and then proceeds to tell us how we don’t have jobs (we both do) and that “mommy and daddy paid the down payment for our house” (they didn’t) because we are 29 years old.

We called the cops again to come out; we put a no trespass order on neighbor and son. If they come into our property and we have proof, they will go to jail. If they continue to harass us outside and we get it on video, we will ask for a no contact order.

Thank you all for your suggestions, support, and making us not feel like we’re the ones being the assholes! Hopefully no more interactions with them and we can just live our lives!