SB Way Back When – Howling in the Night

Apparently, the noise of dogs howling a century ago when folks were trying to sleep was enough to get members of the City Council out at night to hear for themselves.

“What makes lonesome dogs howl at night?” the Santa Barbara Daily News asked on May 11, 1926. One councilman “insisted that a dog enclosed in a pen would go to sleep if sufficiently fed and the pen was warm.” The councilmen were planning to visit the dog pound at Santa Barbara and Ortega streets to discover the source of the problem.