Instead, officials in places like HawaiiCounty speculate that barking complaints have risen in part because more people are home to hear the yapping after losing their jobs.
"We had to do something because you have neighbors living next to dogs that are barking and driving them crazy, " says Mitch Roth, a HawaiiCounty prosecutor who takes on barking cases.
Dog counseling has been in demand in HawaiiCounty since early last year, when county commissioners passed an ordinance banning "barks, bays, cries, howls" that go on continuously for 10 minutes, or intermittently for 20 minutes within a half-hour.