simplym90
November 2, 2018, 8:30 am
7.1k Views
11 Comments
By an edhat reader
There has been a dog barking for the past four days, mostly at night and I can hear it even with my windows closed. It’s in an apartment complex across from mine, can I report it to animal control without knowing what apartment number it is? I just have the address.
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People have a right to peaceful enjoyment of their homes. If someone creates an __ongoing__annoyance, such as a barking dog, it should be resolved. Nobody likes the noise of a unhinged barking dog.
Contact your applicable City or County agency – there is a process in place to deal with this unfortunate situation.
Sending a letter of complaint to landlord would especially work if other tenants in the building complained too. Perhaps make a recording of the barking for proof.
Yes, you can report it. They will come and track down the apartment by the barking sounds. Not sure if they will or can do something but if it’s been barking for 4 days it could be in distress.
Make sure you do it today, on weekends they are on-call and I don’t think they respond to barking dog reports, it has to be something major like a bite or attack.
Go look up building owner’s name and address. Send him/her a letter and describe the problem. Make it their problem, not yours.
Can you simply go over to the complex and listen for the barking, then knock on the door?
You can call SB County Animal Services:
5473 Overpass Road, Goleta, CA 93117 – Telephone: (805) 681-5285
However, if the problem doesn’t stop easily, animal services does very little to help. There really needs to be a place where people can post about specific barking problems so that multiple people disturbed by the same dog can get in contact with each other. If only one person reports it, and the problem doesn’t stop easily after initial contact, animal services will do next to nothing to help.
If you google “santa barbara county dog noise complaint process”, you can read more about it.
All I can advise you on is City Animal Control. I know for a fact that City Animal Control considers that two neighbors constitute “a neighborhood.” This means that you need to get someone to back you up and BOTH of you call it in. Call it in repeatedly, if you have to do so. Squeaky wheel and all of that. If that’s the way you want to go. (First please see my leave a note, talk w/ owner advice at the end of this novelette.) After months of trying to talk with one set of bad owners of barking dogs, I solved one of my barking dog problems by going into mediation (free City service) w/ the dog owners. The problem: two huge dogs left out at night and barking at all hours. And I do mean all hours. Mediation meeting turned into a bad comedy when other dog-owning neighbors (owners themselves of barking dogs) showed up to testify (saying the barking wasn’t a problem). Add to this a letter from the former owner (!) of the house where dogs were barking, testifying how wonderful the new owners were and how I “just didn’t like to see people enjoying life.” Kid you not. One neighbor who was supposed to testify along with me about the unbearable noise sent her husband to the meeting instead. He sat there and told Animal Control that the noise didn’t bother him. Of course not—–he wore earplugs to bed every single night. Everything turned out all right in the end, despite the lies and neighbors being ridiculous about it all. Animal Control got what was going on when I pulled out my chart, showing each and every time the dogs barked at 1 a.m., 2:30 a.m, 4 a.m., etc, highlighted in hot pink. The dogs were fitted with shock collars. Eventually the dogs were kept indoors at night, where they couldn’t bark at every falling leaf, every raccoon, every little night noise. My second experience was a dog barking on Friday night. Each and every Friday night. Hours of barking. I recorded it, left the tape (shows you how many years ago this was) and turned out the owner really didn’t know that the dog was being a nuisance. The capper was: as I was taping, another neighbor came outside, not knowing I was there, and yelled obscenities at the dog: “Shut up you $#%&#! I’m gonna $%&^#!%” and so on. It was all caught on tape. Too funny. The Friday night dog owner was responsible, took measures and the dog never barked like that again. The third incident: Every single neighbor, each in his/her turn, over the course of a year, went to the dog owners’ door and complained, begging the people to make their dogs stop barking. The owners said, “It’s their job to bark.” One fine day I had had enough and went over and when I was told by the one owner “Oh, I get it,” I lost my temper just a bit and in my best controlled anger snarl replied, “No. You DON’T get it.” After that the dogs were then taken to work, farmed out to dog center, I don’t know. The barking stopped. In short (too late for that), if you want the barking to stop you are going to have to take charge, rally the troops and/or take it solely upon yourself to resolve this. Leave a nice note, unsigned: “You may not be aware of the fact . . .” If that doesn’t work, you could try talking with the owner, but not unless you have a sense that this is a nice person who cares about his/her dog. Saying things courteously will get you a long way with some people. With other people it doesn’t matter how you say it, s/he is going to take offense and then, when you have to get authorities involved, you can say you tried to settle things amicably. What really gets me is how many people have dogs and don’t spend enough time with those dogs. Well-exercised dogs don’t bark all of the time. Dogs whose owners spend time with them are much less likely to bark. Poor dogs, left home all alone for hours on end.
Disfunctional derelicts across the street had 3 different sets of barking dogs. Animal control had a sheaf on complaints as thick as a paperback book. I don’t know about SB or Goleta proper, but if you live anywhere else in suburbia, your choices are all bad: Move, construction-grade earplugs 24/7, or hope to go deaf at least in one ear so you can sleep.
I agree with the comment to figure out which apartment. Then you could leave a note. If nothing changes then complain to that buildings landlord. I feel sorry for the dog. Maybe owner works at night and has no idea it’s such a nuisance?