Neighbors and dog issue

What is the name of your state? NC
In November the people that live across the street from me bought a new house and moved. They are renting their home out. The last time they rented their home during a deployment the tenants did a lot of damage to it, so they asked my family if we could keep an eye on it and let them know of anything (for example, more than one family, smoking in the house, more than one dog,etc) Late January, early February the tenants came home with a second dog so after a couple days we let the owners know about the dog - they questioned the tenants and the realator about it and it all came out that they never even paid the pet deposit for their 1st dog and that this new one was a friends dog - needless to say the tenants got ticked off becuase they had to pay their deposit - they then went around to the majority of our neighbors soliciting them to call the police and dog pound against our dogs (one neighbor has told us this and stated that he even brought him a green notebook to keep track of all the times our dogs bark in it he also told us that the tenants stated he was going to get us fined because he had to pay his pet deposit) the teanatn and one other neighbor called and we were visiting by both the police and dog pound. I am not going to lie and say taht my dogs do not bark but the report was false, it stated (according to the officer) that our dogs bark all day continously and are out at 2 and 3 in the morning, in addition it stated that they had been out all that day barking (we were in another town either at work or the doctor) - we have been told that if the police are called agin we will get fined - my dogs have pretty much been inside since Feb 12th and are now wearing shock collars - Do they have to prove that my dogs are out all the time and are constantly barking or can they just take the neighbors word? Is it discrimination that he doesn't call on any other neighbors dogs? (The ones right next door to him (also the ones that agreed to call with him) are in the records at the police station for barking all night long and nobody ever being home to address it with)I am just trying to figure out exaclty what I can do, I have been assured by neighbors that he is planning on calling the cops whenever he gets a chance

we have been told that if the police are called agin we will get fined - my dogs have pretty much been inside since Feb 12th and are now wearing shock collars - Do they have to prove that my dogs are out all the time and are constantly barking or can they just take the neighbors word?

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The police can take the neighbor's word for it. If that happens, you'll need to present your evidence in court, as will they, and if they can't prove that the dogs bark all of the time, you should prevail. But northing's certain.

Hopefully, though, the police were just trying to 'shock' you so that they wouldn't have to come out again...

Is it discrimination that he doesn't call on any other neighbors dogs?

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No.

I am just trying to figure out exaclty what I can do, I have been assured by neighbors that he is planning on calling the cops whenever he gets a chance

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You never disputed that your dogs DO bark a lot. And shock collars are not always effective. What you may have to do is keep the dogs inside most of the time; if the guys keeps calling the cops, and they come out and see that the dogs are inside all of the time, it is possible that they will start taking the neighbor less seriously.

We had a similar problem -- our dogs are barkers and, unbeknown to us, our next door neighbor was a day sleeper and night worker. Although we would have preferred him to simply talk to us (we weren't aware the dogs were barking all day while we were at work), as soon as we talked with the community service officer in our area, we began keeping the dogs inside, and only letting them out when we were home, so we could control the barking, and the problem with the neighbor resolved itself. Our neighbor kept calling the cops anyway, they came out a couple of times, saw that our dogs were inside and that other dogs in the neighborhood were barking, and we haven't heard from the cops in >5 years...

But you can't stop the guy from calling the cops. All you can do is try and manage your end so that the cops don't have anything to cite your for.