It’s late at night, you’re going to bed, and the dog next door
won’t stop howling. Should you don your bathrobe and ask your
neighbor to take the annoyance inside? Maybe squeeze some sausage
links between the fence? Call the cops?
Gilroy – It’s late at night, you’re going to bed, and the dog next door won’t stop howling. Should you don your bathrobe and ask your neighbor to take the annoyance inside? Maybe squeeze some sausage links between the fence? Call the cops?
The Gilroy City Council will try to answer these questions in September when they consider a barking dog ordinance that could impose warnings and fines on owners of bark-happy dogs. But councilmen caution that any punitive measures depend on a pending staff report that will gauge the extent of the barking problem and would only occur if dialogue between neighbors fails.
“We could let citizens take care of all things on their own, and we wouldn’t need laws, but at times, you need certain laws,” said Mayor Al Pinheiro, who doesn’t own dogs. “First you try to find a way to take care of a situation without punitive measures, but if you get to a point where that doesn’t work, some times people’s pocketbooks are what they hear the loudest.”
Councilman Roland Velasco, who owns two cats and is thinking about getting a dog, said he wants to know the scope of the problem before making any decisions.
“Neighbors have dogs, but I feel comfortable approaching my neighbors,” Velasco said. “For the most part, any problem should be solved at the lowest level possible.”
Melissa Movrich, an emergency medical technician who lives off Princevalle Street, tried this approach last year. It didn’t work.
“The neighbor behind my house had these kennel dogs, and they would bark all the time,” Movrich said. “It was very annoying.”
Movrich said that after she politely asked her neighbors to quiet their dogs, nothing happened. The barking continued unabated, so she called the authorities, who said they had received multiple complaints about that particular property and had subsequently imposed a muzzle order, but to no avail.
“They just didn’t make any effort,” she said as she walked her yellow Labrador retriever in Christmas Hill Park last week, joined by her neighbor Mae Valentino Picket, a kindergarten teacher.
Valentino Picket said she does not own dogs, “but I think you should approach your neighbors first.”
Despite her experience, Movrich agreed and said a call to the cops should come only after neighborly talks failed.
Gilroy has an ordinance allowing police to issue nuisance abatement orders, according to the city’s municipal code, but it is not clear if police can issue fines to offenders. Sgt. Jim Gillio, Gilroy police spokesman, did not return calls for comment.
In Millbrae, police can issue citations that impose fines reaching up to $500 for repeat offenders of a dog barking ordinance, and in Morgan Hill, police can impound dogs deemed a public nuisance and issue similar monetary citations.
But only five of the 1,400 animal-related service calls in the last 12 months in Morgan Hill resulted in fines, according to Morgan Hill Police Commander David Swing.
“More commonly what happens is intervention (by) our animal control officer,” he said. “For example, a neighbor calls up because their neighbor’s dog is barking. Police respond or animal control responds, verify the complaint, notify the dog owner – it’s quite possible the dog owner is unaware – and then they work with the dog owner to find some sort of resolution, whether that be through training, obedience schools, devices that are available to discourage barking. If that’s not successful and it continues, then we look at citations and other forms of enforcement.”
These other forms of enforcement are what Gilroy City Council will consider in September.
Councilman Craig Gartman owns two dogs and likened any potential barking ordinance to noise pollution laws. The councilman, who voted against the passage of a noise ordinance in recent months, said he would rather see residents “working together instead of relying on law enforcement to solve their neighbors’ issues.”
“To be a dog owner is to be a responsible owner,” added Gartman, who bought his dogs electronic collars that emit high-pitched frequencies whenever they bark to discourage them from doing so.
Pinheiro, Movrich and Valentino Picket all agreed, though, that any ordinance should be lenient against new dog owners who are trying to train a puppy. Warn first, they all said, and then see if a fine is in order.
Councilman Russ Valiquette said he grew up around continually barking dogs, but he stood between Pinheiro and Gartman on the issue.
“Dogs bark when they’re distressed or when somebody else is somewhere they’re not supposed to be,” he said. “The thing is, if we do something about it, then we’re doing too much, and if we don’t do anything, then we’re not doing enough.”
Staff Writer Chris Bone covers City Hall for The Dispatch. Reach him at 847-7216.
