Wylie, TX Noise Ordinances: Barking Dogs (2026)

Wylie Code of Ordinances § 18-10(a) makes it an offense for an animal owner to permit, or through insufficient control allow, several listed conditions to occur, and subsection (a)(5) singles out noise directly: keeping any animal which, by causing frequent or long continued barking or noise, disturbs any person of ordinary sensibilities in the vicinity is declared unlawful and a public nuisance. This barking provision sits alongside the section's other nuisance categories, including creating hazardous conditions on or spreading to adjacent property, allowing an animal to run at large, creating conditions that breed flies, mosquitoes, ticks or fleas, and breeding an animal within public view.

Enforcement runs through the city's animal services officers, part of the police department under § 18-2, who have authority to issue citations for chapter violations and can pursue enforcement onto private property while investigating at-large animals; the general public-nuisance framework of § 18-10 also empowers the city to seek abatement in addition to any fine. Because § 18-10 does not set its own fine amount, a conviction falls under the citywide general penalty in § 1-13, which caps most Code violations lacking a specific penalty at a fine not exceeding $500.00 per offense, with each day a violation continues treated as a separate offense.

The barking clause applies regardless of the type of animal kept, tying it to the chapter's broad definition of "animal" as any live vertebrate creature, domestic or wild, other than a human being, so it reaches more than just dogs even though barking dogs are the most common complaint animal services receives.