However much I deplore the actions of airline pilot Stephen Woodhouse, who drowned his neighbour’s dog because it wouldn’t stop barking, I can understand his anger.

He snapped after the seven-year-old border terrier called Meg barked from “morning until night” and drowned her in a bucket after grabbing her from the next-door garden.

“I reached my wits’ end,” he said at his trial in Corby last week.

“All I could think of was that the noise had to stop. It was driving me bloody mad.”

Meg’s owners, Alison and Alan Boddington had got Meg as a companion for their daughter, Lauren, who died aged 10 from an asthma attack.

The FlyBe pilot, who was sentenced to 12 weeks in jail, suspended for two years, said: “I can’t believe I have caused a nice family so much suffering and grief.”

It emerged during the trial that Woodhouse had been at home recovering from a heart attack, so the dog’s barking would have impinged on his life far more than normal.

An incessant noise, one you have no control over, is a diabolical torment.

I should know – I have one at home. She’s called Daisy and she’s our cocker spaniel.

She barks at everything and when we first got her as a puppy seven years ago, I found it almost impossible to contain her barking, much to the horror of our long-suffering neighbours, who understandably complained about the noise.

Daisy barked if we shut her in a room away from us, barked to go out into the garden, barked ferociously as she ran out into the garden, barked to come back in again, barked at people walking past our front window, barked at the postman, the rubbish collectors and recycling collectors – plus anyone wearing a hi-viz jacket or a hat or carrying a bag.

And she also barked at cats or foxes yowling in the dead of night.

So I had to find solutions in order not to ruin our neighbours’ lives, especially when their daughter was studying for her GCSEs.

I take her out into the garden on a lead initially, so she feels restricted as she makes an initial examination of her territory to establish that it has not been invaded by marauding birds or the occasional squirrel, and so when I let her off the lead, she is quiet more often than not. At night, I switch the radio on low all night to drown out the noise of the cats and foxes, I peg together the floor-length curtains to our French windows so she can’t see out into the garden, and I shut all the doors downstairs to muffle any night-time barking.

I still do this every night, even though she very rarely barks at night now, but I still cannot stop her barking at people walking past our living room on the pavement outside.

There’s a particular woman, the lovely Shirley, who lives on our road and walks her two dogs separately (they don’t get on) up our road every day.

The only part of Shirley visible above our front garden shrubbery is the top of her head but Daisy recognises her curls and throws herself around the sofa in front of the window barking frenziedly because she knows Shirley’s two dogs are with her, even though she can’t see them.

Our neighbours rarely complain these days, but I am conscious that Daisy’s barking must be a nuisance to them, for which I feel very guilty.

For it was my decision to get a dog and my fault I didn’t train her properly, and my neighbours had no choice about it.

However, as they have let me know when the noise disturbed them, I have made all possible arrangements to minimise it (perhaps not always successfully) – and I would recommend anyone disturbed by a noise they can’t control but that can be controlled by someone else telling them and asking them to stop it.

A polite request can work wonders.

What a shame Stephen Woodhouse didn’t talk to his neighbours about Meg’s barking.

A solution could have been found and he wouldn’t have ended up in court, Meg would still be alive and the neighbours would not have suffered so much unnecessary grief.