We have had this. A couple from Bondi in Sydney a very busy city beach area complained about noise at our farm. The only reason you notice when a car goes past I saw because it is so quiet in between. In the city you wouldn’t even notice because it is all so noisy
2 Likes
lol!!! Street credentials, or credibility I think. It means you can fit right in with the toughs. 
1 Like
I have the same experience here. I wear industrial strength ear plugs most of the time and holler and gnash my teeth at the barking dogs in my hood. There are occasional sirens and I’m in the path of the helicopters flying to the oil islands and to Catalina. Most of my guests never bat an eyelash. Some even say how quiet it is! And it actually is most of the time–but not all the time! Luckily, once I’m asleep I don’t hear a thing, not even the guest 2 nights ago who snored like a bear. The woman in the studio below told me. I apologized profusely.
Speaking of which…or whom…Have you had really bad snorers??? I certainly have.
I have had a few heavy snorers. My husband would fall down laughing if I criticized because I am a loud snorer. Fortunately, my husband and I are sound sleepers.
We, of course, have occasional sirens. We often have helicopters, because we are close to UCLA. We have children that play outside all day long. I’m not upset by barking dogs. I adore pretty much everything dogs do. My husband worries that guests will be upset about noise. I point out that you’ll die young if you worry about things over which you have no control. I figure that if guests want silence, they should not vacation in a city. From your posts, it appears that you are far more noise sensitive than I am.
I think this is the weirdest thing to rate, because AirBNB gives you the general area on a map so you can verify what’s in the area. That’s why I am so surprised by it.
We don’t have the best location, but we’re not promising the best location. We’re promising where we are. This comes down to accuracy (which is already rated) rather than location.
shrug
3 Likes
I’m pretty sure I am. Luckily I don’t have kids playing and the sirens don’t bother me because they’re infrequent and you know they’ll pass in a few seconds; same with the helicopters. It’s the random dogs barking that, unlike you, I don’t find adorable when I want to take a nap after work or want to sleep in on Sunday morning.
Since you accept guest dogs, at least the dog noise issue isn’t going to be a problem I would think. If you’ve got a noise-maker then you have to put up with others who do as well. But then you’d still have the hollering kids and the rest of it to worry about. :))))
I don’t permit guest dogs unless they are service dogs. This is because one of my dogs is sometimes dog aggressive. She’s wonderful with all humans, but she thinks small dogs that act dominant would be good snacks.
I enjoy the “hollering” kids. They make up elaborate scenarios when they are playing. Some of my guests have mentioned that this is charming. I slept through the Northridge earthquake so sirens, dogs or children are not going to keep me awake.
1 Like
Would you be bothered by chronic barking of neighboring dogs? In our neighborhood, our HOA has a rule of any dog barking, howling, braying, crying etc. over 10 minutes being a violation. However, when it came to the wolf whistling parrot next door belonging to renters, I could do nothing about it! Because the parrot was not a dog!
1 Like
It depends on the situation. I am bothered if the dog is barking because it’s being abused by being left outside all the time. We used to have a German Shepard two doors down who barked all the time unless he was in the house. He was a rescue dog who couldn’t be left alone in the house because he was a chewer. My husband worried a lot that our Airbnb guests would be upset. It didn’t bother me because I thought about what would have happened to the dog if he hadn’t been rescued. We do make choices about how to feel about things. I am extremely attached to dogs, so what is beneficial to them doesn’t bother me. My husband finds this amusing. Once I came home to find that he had left our dogs alone with two down pillows with which they’d made quite a mess. I asked if he’d taken pictures. He said, “Yes, because I know you’re the kind of crazy person who would think it’s cute instead of being upset about the mess and the destruction of your pillows.”
1 Like
Yes I remember now your telling me about your aggressive dog. Good thing he does like humans 
I too enjoy the sound of kids playing. I sub elementary and lots of pre-k for LAUSD. But I also like driving away at the end of the day to a little peace and quiet, such as it is. For the time being we’re kid free but it’s not going to last too long. The new people next door have 4 bedrooms to fill.
It may not have bothered you, but what about everyone else? Including Air guests? Maybe you don’t care if you lose bookings over a noise issue or the quality of life declines in your hood, but I’d be plenty pissed off if my guests stopped coming because they didn’t like the noisy neighborhood. They don’t know that they’re supposed to take pity on this poor noisy dog because of its situation. Noise is noise.
As I’ve said, you seem to be particularly noise sensitive. Most of our guests come from cities where the ambient noise is much louder than Los Angeles, so they find it blissfully quiet here. We get mostly five star ratings with a few four star ratings for location and we’re booked almost all of the time. The feedback I’ve gotten from the people who left us four star ratings for location is that they wished we were closer to the beach or closer to the mountains. I’ve never had a guest complain in the review or in the feedback that it is noisy here. I have had three guests who mentioned that our neighborhood was noisier than they are used to, one who lives on a large property in upstate New York, one who lives on two acres in Texas and one who lives on a large property in North Carolina. I had one guest from Indonesia say that she was coming from a hotel where people were so loud that she couldn’t sleep and she appreciated how quiet it is here. I don’t have the ability to silence my neighbors, so I don’t worry about it.
I don’t agree that “noise is noise”. I’ve found that all of my noise sensitive friends tolerate noises well if they approve of the activity that creates them. One of my friends can’t stand any noise made by humans to the point that she complained that her neighbor in the next apartment dropped his shoes in the closet instead of bending over to place them on the floor. She has no issue with trains, planes or barking dogs. I can’t stand the noises people make when they chew with their mouths open or when they blow their noses. I am fine with music, parties, children playing, dogs barking, etc.
I think dogs who yap chronically when their owners leave are certainly not happy campers. If my dog ever started doing that (not likely, she’s 7 now) I would get a vibration collar for her.
Now this gives me an excuse to post a photo of her. 
She is about 2.5 months old here.
12 Likes
Oh my goodness, she’s just adorable. One of our dogs cries when we leave him outside after dark. It sounds more like a monkey howl than barking. We can’t leave him inside when we’re gone because he chews everything (box spring, chair, vacuum cleaner hose, etc.). We got him a vibration collar and a citronella collar. Neither of them worked.
1 Like
She certainly is
As I sit here typing this, I can hear the constant yap of the dog belonging to my neighbour who lives opposite me. It’s annoying! The dog isn’t on its own and the sound of the owner constantly yelling ‘shut up!’ is even more annoying. In the apartment above live two little dogs who yap constantly when the owners aren’t there. To be honest, it’s annoying.
little yappers, or big yappers… dogs that bark chronically aren’t happy… Ellen, do you watch Cesar Milan at all? A lot of his theories make total sense. The dog that destroys your house… Cesar would ask if he is getting regular walks and a lot of exercise daily. 45 minutes minimum. The pent up energy causes them to get destructive with things.
1 Like
I don’t watch Cesar Milan. I think he is to dog training what Trump is to politics. Our dog has severe arthritis to 45 minute walks would land him in the emergency vet if not kill him.
1 Like
He sounds frustrated though. Is there anything you can offer to counteract his frustration?
He was abused before we got him. Our vet believes that he was kept in a kennel and rarely let out. When he followed my husband’s coworker home, he’d been a stray for at least a week. In addition to having been abused and food deprived, he’s a German Shorthaired Pointer which is a high strung breed. Our vet wondered if we really wanted to keep him as our vet describes the breed as being bred to have OCD. As he was and is a very sweet dog who needed a home, we made a commitment to take care of him even though it’s not always easy. All he wants is to be in the house on our bed. As long as we’re home this is fine. If we’re only gone for a couple of hours we leave him in his kennel which he prefers to being outside. If we’re gone more than a couple of hours we can’t leave him in the kennel. When we are able to we take him with us as he loves being in the car. I promise we do as much as we can to keep him comfortable, but every once in a while we need to leave him outside. As the neighbor on one side runs a film set catering company from her house which involves starting her catering truck at 4:00 A.M. and the neighbor on the other side is a realtor with a very loud phone voice, I think they can occasionally put up with Teacake barking.
3 Likes
Teacake, such a cute name!