Yapper

I hate annoying dogs. I especially hate the little yippy ones that think any change for whatever reason is a reason to alert their owner to whatever vital observation they have made. Visitors arriving, debarking, neighbors arriving, leaving, cars going by, changes in humidity... We have neighbors, as so many are forced to in our increasingly dense living centers, and they have a little yippy dog. It wouldn't be so bad, except for the fact that the walls are somewhat thin, though the floorplan is thoughtfully laid out to minimize this effect as much as possible. Now, this is a dog of the Bichon Frise breed (it even sounds annoying), and these are the quintessential celebrity canine accessory, along with teacup Chihuahuas. That right there should be enough to embarrass any potential owner out of interest in that particular breed.
This neighbor's dog is no exception to the yippy dog stereotype, yipping incessantly whenever any event happens whatsoever, so it is a relatively constant background noise. Perhaps for some lucky apartment dweller out there, inured to noise by years of obnoxious neighbors and street noise, this would be fine. However, I come from Alaska, parts of which, even in the main cities, you can't hear anything except the snow splintering.
The really fun part of this is that they are of a certain ethnic background which lends itself to language and musical tastes that lean higher on the sonic register than mainstream American culture, with it's tendency towards low, heavy beats and deep guitar rhythms. Language being partly a function of biology, those with smaller bodies tend to have higher-pitched voices as well; compare the difference of an average 10-year-old girl and a 215-lb. adult man. Different. By quite a bit.
It is entirely possible that a constant exposure to these higher tones as both a cultural phenomenon and a biological feature results in higher pitches being the norm and therefore perfectly normal to my neighbors. However, living in dense societal matrices necessitates some hopefully voluntary restrictions in behavioral patterns. Cranking the stereo up to 11 is proscribed unless the neighbors are invited to the party; yelling in the middle of the night is seen as rude in all cultures I am aware of, especially most Western cultures. I'm not suggesting that the dog be silenced surgically (although I can't say I don't enjoy the thought); merely that the family could do a better job in keeping it's shrill yap from being as pervasive as it is.
You ask, "why not just ask the family nicely to keep their dog a bit quieter?" Ahhh, and herein lies the crux of the matter. Verra no Ingissh. None. At least, none of the family members, barring the 10-year-old (approx.) son, speak enough English to understand the subject of a discourse, much less follow a meaningful dialog to a successful conclusion.
At the time this family moved in, I was engaged in a semi-voluntary withdrawal from a fairly serious caffeine habit, as well as a massive reduction in my alcohol intake. Needless to say, I was less than my usual charming self during this approximately 3-week period. This dog was the equivalent of nails on a chalkboard every time someone would walk up the stairs, down the stairs, open or close a door, or make a noise. As this is not a traditional large extended family, this was not as much an issue as it perhaps could have been, and I thank the Karma gods for it. However, this still added up to an almost criminal level of noise pollution at short remove from my living quarters. I am not in college and I do not accept a certain level of background noise as a fact of life. I don't expect silence either, but rather an existence relatively free of extraneous noise. I am exceptionally fortunate in that my other 2 neighbors are nearly silent, and I return the favor. It is a very calm situation all around. Until the yapper.
I wish I had pursued a civic course of action regarding this problem, but I confess that I did not. Instead, every time the dog would start yapping, I would yap back, aggravating the dog to the point where it would nearly yap itself hoarse trying to out-yip me. This was a rather satisfying solution to the problem because it allowed me to vent some of the feelings of violence that I was harboring towards that little rat, and it hopefully also caused the family having to live with said dog to go a little crazy as well. The perfect solution would have been to muzzle or shoot the dog, but it's not mine, and I could never get a shot off.
After about 2 weeks of this yip-for-yap struggle, the dog became strangely quiet. Not silent, but just didn't yap as much anymore. Apparently, the owners of the dog got the hint that their dog was driving someone crazy and took steps to minimize the noise, whether by putting the dog in a back room or teaching it to be less vocal. Either way, the dog is now tolerable. It still yips, but few and far between. I can live with this; as I said--I don't require silence, just a relatively noise-free existence.
I do wish this had been resolved in a manner more conducive to neighborly relations, but as the communications barrier was nigh-insurmountable, it was done through a more crude method. I'm not proud of it, but it worked.
Were they unaware of the effect the dog had on others? Maybe. Did they just not "actively hear" the dog, having become accustomed to high-pitched sounds? Probably. I think that as our living density increases, the human need to just be left alone is becoming strained, as our lives are constantly being bombarded with noise, advertising, neighbors, friends, computers, and other sources chipping away at our sanity, and that if we continue to compress, when that decompression happens, we may find ourselves barking like madmen instead of being neighbors and just yelling at them to shut the fuck up. :D
Seriously, all this talk of "diversity" and "can't we all just get along?" is becoming laughable. I don't think humans were meant to get along with each other, much less in close proximity. I don't want to love my neighbor; I like my family and friends just fine and don't need any more. Does this make me anti-social? I don't think so. I just don't think that the utopian dream of peace on Earth is achievable in our current biological state. We are still too close to our animal ancestors to entirely be docile. It's a great dream, don't get me wrong; just don't expect it to happen for even thousands of years. We call ourselves civilized, but crime and death and horrible diseases and people fighting over lands that are essentially sun-blasted cat litterboxes are growing disproportionately to our staggering population growth. We are growing too big to contain with our current governmental structures. The fall of Rome was preceded by insane leaders doing unconscionable things because the people were powerless, fractured and therefore unable to hold their society together. The rich got richer, the poor got desperate, and by the time of Pope Urban VI, the once-most powerful nation the world had ever known was a rusted hulk inhabited by the lime burners. A revolution is coming. Maybe not in my generation, probably not the next, but within 3 or 4 more, the world will come to a wall that it cannot negotiate and the center will no longer hold. I don't believe in any Second Coming bullshit or the reincarnation of the Hare Krishna as a cat or whatever particular fantasy you grew up with--I have my share, too. I do know that the schism is widening and soon all that's going to be left is a crack. I just hope we don't bark with nuclear weapons at someone else's dog.