New Animal Control.Org

A Nutshell Description of the Most Common Types of Barking Laws

The two most common types of "anti-barking" laws are the multiple-household Laws and the consecutive-disruption ordinances.

The Multiple Household Laws:

The multiple-household law is the catch-22 of animal control ordinances. According to that set of laws, the barking of your neighbor's dog is only deemed to be illegal after the case goes to court and a judge rules that it is so. The catch is that the court will not agree to hear your case unless you are first able to persuade some of the people from the neighboring households to join you in pursuing a legal case that is sure to be as contentious and upsetting as it is long and drawn-out.

But precious few people want to get involved in a big legal battle. So try as you may, the neighbors will almost never sign on for a thing like that. And that's the end of it, as the authorities deny you legal protection based on how your neighbors choose to behave.

The Consecutive Disruption Laws

The consecutive-disruption laws really just barely make a pretense of trying to prevent chronic barking. Their goal seems to be simply to make it illegal for a dog to bark all the time, without letup.

Under a consecutive-disruption law a dog can bark habitually, as long as he does not continue on for more than a certain number of minutes in a row. For example, allowing one's dog to bark is only deemed to be illegal if he does it for more than twenty-minutes consecutively. However, if the dog falls quiet for more than sixty-seconds during that twenty minute period, then the clock resets, and the dog can bark on nonstop for yet another twenty minutes without violating the law. Under that kind of ordinance, if you have two or three neighbors who each keep a highly vocal canine, you can have the sound of somebody else's barking dog going off inside your house once every forty-five seconds, 24-hours a day, and legally there still isn't anything you can do to stop it.

The real effect of both of those types of ordinances is to legalize chronic barking, because they make it next to impossible for the victims to do anything about it.

For detailed information, see The Barking Laws, Law Enforcement, and the Courts or, for news stories that exemplify the system, go to our sister site, barkingdogs.net, and read about The Usual Legal Runaround.

This page is part of the Failed System section of New Animal Control.Org