Kauai now has a law to address the problem of barking dogs.
Dogs have barked on the island for decades. Roosters crow with impunity. Feral pigs snort around backyard mango trees at night. Cats yowl. Young men rev their big trucks. These are sounds of country living.
But Kauai is not country anymore. It is becoming something else; and in that transformation, patience, courtesy and tolerance have been worn away. Rather than deal with the unpleasantness of working through neighborly conflict, people contract it out to the county — pick up the trash, put out the fires, tell my neighbor to shut up his dog.
This barking law has been debated by the Kauai County Council since at least 2002.
It took nearly 14 years to get legislation in place that basically says the humane society can issue a warning to the owner of a dog that won’t shut up. Fourteen years of tortured debate resulting in a previous law that was enacted and then repealed before this new one stuck, plus volumes of overheated testimony, online comments and letters to the editor.
Doggies have a voice!
I moved to Kauai expecting quiet!
A howling dog is a lonely dog!
My dog howls because he hates your guts!
On and on.
All because the thought of going over to Uncle Joe’s house and saying, “Hey, Joe, your dogs are even louder than my mother-in-law. Ha ha. You need help building a fence so they can run around your yard? I can bring my tools on Sunday. Or how about I send my kid over after school to help walk them? Whatchoo think?” is way too much social negotiation for modern citizens to handle on their own.
Of course, Uncle Joe might actually be Mean Joe, one of those “Get the hell outta’ my yard” guys.
Meanwhile, tourists go to Kauai and die in the surf. Homeless people set up shanty camps on the grounds of the county building. Crystal meth is as bad as ever and traffic is approaching Waianae-level gridlock. Not much progress on those fronts, but barking dogs, check that off the list. That’s some good political leadership. Of course, it was always the case that a complaint could be made, but the new law provides alternatives for resolving the dispute and includes mediation as an option.
The result is more tension on a little island suffering through a schismatic crisis.
A nervous Hanapepe resident recently took to the Kauai Buy and Sell community Facebook page to explain her situation, plead for understanding and beg forgiveness:
“So sorry to all my Hanapepe Valley neighbors. My female pit is in heat again so I had to put her in the kennel so her son my male pit don’t jump her. And he is not too happy he is so whining to get to her. So again so sorry. They will be separated for a few weeks. No I don’t just let him whine I go out ‘n comfort him but he just want to bust a nut. So sorry.”
Poor doggie. In the country, a male animal howling his amorous frustration is part of the natural order of things. But in gentrified Kauai, it’s cause for citation and mediation.
Reach Lee Cataluna at 529-4315 or lcataluna@staradvertiser.com.
