› Flat Chat Strata Forum › Pets: Furry friends … or fiends? › Best way to deal with big barking dog in ACT apartment. › Current Page
There’s a very simple truism about dogs barking when their owners aren’t there. The owners can’t hear them and it’s not unusual for owners to choose not to believe that their dogs are barking.
So record the noise, keep a diary of when it occurred and get another owner to corroborate.
And check your by-laws (rules) to see what they say about permission for pets.
Section 32 of theACT Unit Titles (Management) Act says this:
(1) A unit owner or occupier of a unit may keep an animal, or allow an animal to be kept, within the unit or the common property—
(a) if the animal is an assistance animal; or
(b) if the animal is not an assistance animal, only if—
(i) if the rules of the owners corporation include a pet friendly rule—the animal is kept in accordance with the pet friendly rule; or
(ii) the owners corporation consents to the animal being kept.
If the dog owner refuses to see reason and can’t or won’t do anything about the barking, you can apply to the Owners Corporation under Section 111 of the Act for them to send a breach notice (Section 109) which, if ignored, could lead to a fine of up to $550.
If the OC won’t get involved, have a look at this fact sheet about how barking dogs are dealt with in the ACT which also has complaint forms attached.
As for the size of the dogs, that’s barely relevant (unless they are scaring people, in lifts for instance). The biggest dogs like Great Danes can be perfect apartment pets.