Mediate, schmediate. Let the dog bark.

Sharks gotta swim, bats gotta fly.

And dogs gotta bark. Some more loudly than others. Take my dog, for instance. He's very loud. I always tell people how loud his is, but they always think, "Well, how loud can he possibly be?"

And then they hear him howl and they stick their fingers in their ears and look upon his canine vissage with awe.

But he isn't a constant barker. It's the constant barking that gets on your nerves. And the yapping. Don't get me started on the yapping.

The problem with noisy dogs has gotten so bad in Phoenix that a law school is sending students out to act as mediators. I say let the dogs work it out.

Complaints are so widespread that Phoenix is enlisting help from Phoenix School of Law students to run a free, downtown barking-dog mediation service that will start this month. A similar service in the southeast Valley, Chandler-based Solve-It!, has mediated more than 150 dog-barking cases since 2007, coordinator Wendy Hollingshead said. Dog-barking complaints represent half the agency's phone calls and one-fourth of scheduled mediations, she said.