I get it. Clarksburg City Council wanted to show they were doing something about noisy dogs. Nobody wants to listen to barking for hours on end. It’s annoying, especially late at night. But instead of fixing the issue, they passed an ordinance so oddly structured it might actually make things worse.
Under the new rule, if your dog barks for more than 15 consecutive minutes during the day, you could face a citation and a fine. Sounds tough — until you really look at it.
Let’s start with the time window: 7 a.m. to 10 p.m. That completely skips over the late-night hours — when barking is actually most disruptive. A dog howling from midnight to 6 a.m.? Apparently fine. But if Fido barks for 16 minutes at 9:15 a.m. while you’re at work, that’s a violation. That’s not public safety — that’s poorly timed logic. Is this because the old ordinance already covered the late hours? That is unclear because it does not seem to designate a time when I checked.
And then there’s enforcement. Who’s clocking this? Are police officers now required to carry stopwatches and sit outside your house counting woofs? What happens if the dog stops at minute 14 and starts again two minutes later? What if your pup has dramatic pauses like Christopher Walken? Does the clock reset? Does anyone honestly believe this is enforceable in a fair, consistent way?
We already know how this will go. This isn’t a law that will be equally applied — it’s a law that will come out of the drawer only when a neighbor is furious and demands action. Which is no doubt how the ordinance became a reality, someone went to council person to complain, it was the right person, so we got a shiney new ordinance. The rest of the time, it’ll be ignored. That’s not justice. That’s selective enforcement.
And here’s the most frustrating part: Clarksburg already had a barking ordinance. It was just repealed to make room for this. That law wasn’t perfect, but it had teeth — and more importantly, it had flexibility to allow our officers and code to use common sense. Take a look:
507.17 KEEPING NOISY DOG PROHIBITED (REPEALED)
(a) It shall be unlawful for any person to keep or harbor any dog within the City which, by frequent and habitual barking, howling, yelping, crying, or squalling creates unreasonably loud and disturbing noises of such character, intensity, and duration as to disturb the peace, quiet, and good order of the City.
(d) If found guilty, the owner could be fined:
– $50 for the first offense
– $100–$500 for a second
– $200–$500 for third and beyond
The new law reportedly TAKES AWAY the first $50 fine and replaces it with a warning but increases the fine for repeat offenses — up to $750 on a third — but good luck ever getting there. What use is a higher fine if the bar for proving a violation is so specific it borders on the ridiculous?
Clarksburg Police Chief Mark Kiddy Spoke during the meeting regarding the ordinance, saying, “Last year, I researched, we had less than 50 barking dog complaints for the entire year. Which isn’t a huge number, you’re talking two or three a month. I’ve been answering barking dog complaints for 40 years, I mean, we go, we ask them, ‘hey, keep your dog quiet,” 80% of the time we leave and it’s over with.” It really sounds like he supported this change with all that excitement. I can see the look on his face in my head when i read that quote. He sounds annoyed.
I don’t believe this was passed with bad intent. Most likely, it was a well-meaning response to one loud complaint. But that’s exactly the problem: policymaking by anecdote rarely leads to good law. Instead of improving what we had, the city replaced a functional ordinance with one that’s narrower, harder to enforce, and — let’s be honest — kind of silly.
To be fair, I haven’t seen the full ordinance in writing yet. If there’s more to it than what’s been reported, I’ll gladly reconsider. But from everything I’ve seen so far, Clarksburg didn’t solve a problem — it just created a new one.
Let’s hope this isn’t as misguided as it sounds — because if it is, we’ve just made bad law out of good intentions.
by Gary Keith II
