Mountain View, CA Noise Ordinances: Barking Dogs (2026)

Sec. 62 makes it unlawful for any person to harbor, keep or maintain a dog in the city whose loud barking, howling or baying disturbs the peace and quiet of one or more neighbors. The section defines "loud barking" with two numeric thresholds: barking that continues for ten minutes straight, or that recurs intermittently for a half hour or more, and that creates a noise disturbance across a residential or commercial property line, by day or by night. The ordinance exempts a dog that is protecting or resisting a trespasser on its own premises, but the code places the burden of proving that defense on the dog's owner, keeper or handler, not on the complaining neighbor.

Enforcement runs through the city's animal services division: Sec. 12 gives the animal control officer authority over Chapter 5 violations, and Sec. 85 authorizes the administrator, the service provider's animal control officers, or other designated employees to issue citations under the authority of Penal Code Sec. 5. Funds collected from civil or administrative enforcement go to the service provider under Sec. 85(c). Because Sec. 62 defines the violation by duration and disturbance rather than by decibel level, an animal control officer or hearing officer relies on the length and frequency of the barking documented in a complaint to establish that the ten-minute continuous or thirty-minute intermittent threshold was crossed.