Neighbor very sensitive to brief dog barking. Need advice (co-op).

just moved into an apartment less than a month ago (nyc, co-op, purchased) with our a small, older dog (10 years old). Obviously, pet friendly building and she passed the interview/approval etc.

First night in the apt, she barked a few times out of excitement, and we immediately got a knock on our door from one of the building staff members giving us a heads up that our downstairs neighbor is noise sensitive and he heard the dog.

Since then, this neighbor has complained a handful of times but never to us directly. He has a habit of calling down to the desk to relay the complaint. FTR, we monitor our dog almost 24/7. We have record of when she barks and it is barely ever more than 3-5 seconds of barks, except for one incident I’ll get to later. If we aren’t home, it is only in response to loud hallway activity. Unfortunately, there is construction going on a couple doors down and the crew makes a lot of noise when they come in and out for the day, so if she barks (which doesn’t even happen every day) it’s during those times. Otherwise, it’s in response to one of us coming home, which was the case the first day. Whenever we are home, we shush her.

We tried to head this off with management, and we asked for clarification regarding the buildings specific policy about barking: how complaints are verified/recorded, and what the building tolerates for barking. No response yet.

There was one incident where the construction crew stood outside our door for a long time having a conversation, and our dog barked for about 2.5 minutes (intermittent, not constant). This sucked, because we have *never* heard her bark this much and we weren’t home to stop it. We previously had a floor-through apartment, so there was never noise outside our door. Staff were called to verify the barking which stopped before they could, so they didn’t log it. Of course, he then complained directly to management about this, and management sent us a warning letter. Again, no reply to our previous email.

In the meantime, we’ve had our rugs delivered, got a good white noise machine, and have started our dog on a low dose daily regiment of trazodone (something she has taken for situational anxiety but we are told by our vet it is safe for regular use). We even reached out to an acoustic engineer about a total mitigation project, and the consultation alone was $2500, which we cannot do.

All of our steps seem to be helping as she isn’t reacting as much to hallway noise. That said, we can’t always be home if something happens in the hallway outside of our control. People might have conversations in the hall, staff take out trash while listening to music loudly, construction guys come and go.

We have also made some good early relationships in the building with other residents and staff, and there is a crystal clear consensus that our downstairs neighbor is a jerk. He complains constantly, about everything. The issue we seem to be facing is that he tells management to jump and they jump. We do not want this to escalate into a legal situation, and we sure as hell are not moving or re-homing our dog, though he successfully pressured another resident into the latter in the past. (PS, that resident confronted him and he went ballistic, so talking to him directly is off the table for now. He is not rational.)

We have not approached the Board, and not sure if they are aware. Being new residents, we don’t want our first interaction with the board to be litigious or argumentative. At the same time, we need to move on with our lives and not have this dominate our experience in our first home. Any thoughts/advice?