WICHITA FALLS (KFDX/KJTL) — Wichita Falls Animal Services, as part of their ongoing pet ordinance campaign, is making sure the community knows what’s in line with the ordinance and what’s not.

Animal Services Administrator Nicki Bacon stopped by our noon show to talk about some of the public nuisance parts of the ordinance.

Carney Porter: The Wichita Falls Animal Services, as part of their ongoing pet ordinance campaign, is making sure we know what’s in line with the ordinance and what’s not. So here to tell us more on this is services Administrator Nicki Bacon. Thank you so much for joining us today.

Nicki Bacon: You’re welcome. Thank you for having me. So this month, where our ordinance campaign is focused on nuisance animals, and we’re focusing really on feces or barking animals.

So what we consider a nuisance for barking animals would be one that excessively barks for 10 to 15 minutes continuously throughout the night and interferes with somebodies ability to enjoy their home or enjoy their surrounding areas. A dog will bark, right? It happens, but one that continually does it on a constant basis. That is a nuisance, and we can come out and investigate and try to help you with that that issue and speak to your neighbors.

The other one would be feces, allowing a pet to defecate or urinate, urinate on someone’s yard continuously. That could cause a obnoxious odor that could be considered for as a nuisance, especially if you’re not cleaning it up. So if you clean it up, that doesn’t count as being a nuisance.

Carney Porter: You’re doing your duty. Yes.

Nicki Bacon: Yeah. So always make sure you’re carrying or you’re carrying something to throw away waste or pick up the waste and get it off of somebody else’s property. An animal – owned animal – that damages another’s property or someone who feeds feral cats because those cats can damage everybody else’s property. That can become a nuisance, especially if they’re not permitted as a feral cat colony.

Okay, So if you read our ordinances, there’s a lot more that goes into public nuisance, but our top ones are barking dogs, feces and then feral cat feeding.

Carney Porter: And you want to make sure you avoid that, that charge those fees and even a misdemeanor, too possibly if you don’t pay those fines, so make sure you’re on top of it. We’ll have more on that over on our website. Thank you so much for joining us today. It was very informative. We appreciate it. We’ll be right back. Don’t go anywhere.