Rapides Parish, LA Noise Ordinances: Barking Dogs (2026)

Sec. 19-52(a) sets the parish's baseline rule: it is unlawful to make, continue, or cause to be made or continued any loud, unnecessary or unusual noise, or any noise that annoys, disturbs, injures or endangers the comfort, repose, health, peace or safety of others, anywhere in the parish. Subsection (b) then lists examples that count as violations without limiting the general rule, and item (4) names animal noise specifically: the keeping of any animal, including but not limited to dogs, birds or fowl, which by causing frequent or long continued noise shall disturb the comfort or repose of any person in the vicinity.

Unlike the parish's hour restrictions on radios and yelling in the same subsection, the barking-dog clause carries no clock: it applies at any hour, so long as the noise is frequent or long continued and disturbs a neighbor. The ordinance dates to July 10, 1990, and Sec. 1, added by a September 11, 1990 amendment, supplies the penalty: violating Sec. 19-51 or Sec. 19-52, including the animal-noise clause, is a misdemeanor punishable by up to thirty days in jail or a fine of up to one hundred dollars, or both, at the court's discretion.

Because the rule is a nuisance standard rather than a decibel limit, an owner's exposure turns on whether the barking is frequent or long continued and whether it actually disturbs a person in the vicinity, not on a fixed noise threshold.