Dear Editor:

Thank you, Suzanne Dodd, for her barking dog letter to the editor. She is certainly not the only one who suffers from this everyday, ongoing, and constant nuisance noise. 

The despicable dog noise goes on and on for several reasons. One, our city officials simply refuse to adequately enforce a noise code in this city. The evidence is obvious by all the barking dogs, the loud and speeding motorcycles and the very loud and usually drunken backyard parties. If one were very aware, they would realize that the dog population is about 1/4th of our people population in Downey. This are a lot of nuisance barking dogs.

In this country, dogs seem to be our 'sacred cow' and it gets to make all the noise it wants. If a dog bothers you, instead of the city enforcing the noise code, it forces you to go through the ridiculous nuisance of going to court. This is cheap and insulting to the quiet people who can't sleep, study or enjoy working in their gardens. 

If a rooster or a peacock, or a monkey made the same amount of noise as a dog, the city would take it from you, but not so for the dogs – for its noise is somehow more sacred than all other noises. Like you, I don't get it either!

For a dog owner to say dogs bark, it's what they do, then why can't other owners say “roosters crow, monkeys screech, peacocks caw, and people holler: it's what they do." Our city will not do a real survey to truly find out how many of us are bothered everyday and then inform us via this newspaper. This is a shame as well as lack of transparency.

Just because a dog is dog does not mean the noise ordinances should not apply to them. Indeed there is something very wrong and insulting with the way this issue is (mis)handled. 

Jim Beaming
Downey