Haverhill, MA Noise Ordinances: Barking Dogs (2026)

Chapter 137's Article IV, Barking Dogs, General Penalty, puts the corrective-action duty on the animal's owner in § 137-15. Once the Police Department or Animal Control Officer determines that a dog or other animal is barking excessively or making other excessive or unreasonable noise, the owner or keeper must restrain and stop the noise immediately after receiving due notice from the Animal Control Officer, the Mayor, or the Chief of Police. Subsection B makes the consequence of ignoring that notice explicit: failing, neglecting, or refusing to restrain or stop the barking after notice exposes the owner to immediate impoundment of the animal and forfeiture of its license, without any additional warning required.

The penalty for the underlying violation runs through § 137-16, the same general penalty clause that covers the rest of Chapter 137: a $50 fine for a first offense and $100 for every offense after that, plus an extra $100 where bodily harm is involved. Because the trigger is a determination by the Police Department or Animal Control Officer rather than a fixed decibel level or time of day, a complaint about a barking dog in Haverhill is investigated case by case, and the notice-and-impoundment mechanism gives officers a faster remedy than waiting for repeated citations to add up.