Hi Lorraine
Sorry to hear about your troubles
A similar thing happened to us about 8 years ago with our rescued GSD Sheba! She suffered seperation anxiety and it seemed that unknown to us she was howling the place down everytime we went out
An elderly neighbour took action by reporting us to the Enviromental Health Dept, that was the first time we knew anything about the howling! Wish she had had a word with us first
Anyhow basically we realised we had to do something about it, as it wasnt fair on our neighbours I have to say there is nothing worse than other peoples dogs disturbing your peace
We got in an animal behaviourist to try and help us cure the anxiety Sheba felt! We let our neighbour know that we were trying to overcome the problem and could she bear with us, we also let the Enviro Health know the same thing. She did get better with time although not PERFECT and my mum helped us out by taking her to her house if we were gonna be out longer than an hour
It showed to our neighbour that we did take on board the problem of the noise and we did try to resolve the problem and kept her informed of the situation. In the end the neighbour go to know the full story of our rescue dog and I think its because we did try to overcome the problem, the old lady ended up absolutely adoring SHEBA and she agreed to compromise with us and as long as it didnt happen excessively she was willing to try and ignore it if it meant SHEBA didnt have to go back to yet ANOTHER rescue home.
On the day SHEBA was put to sleep the old lady absolutely broke her heart crying, she gave us a card!
I know its hard Lorraine, but I would do your best to try and show willing with your neigbours, it can become very stressful having all the bad feeling bewteen you and it might be easier and for you to keep the dogs in during the day when you are not home :-
Good luck let us know how you get on
Emma and Indie