It can’t have been pleasant for the Athol Selectboard to order a local dog owner to surrender her pets for being a public nuisance. Most people like dogs and respect the rights of their neighbors to live their lives without undue government interference. But there are limits. And those boundaries in this case were the lot lines on Rich Place.
As unpleasant as it may have been for the Selectboard, their action recently was prompted by years of Rich Place resident Christine Rausch flouting the law and abusing her neighbors by letting her dogs run unrestrained after repeated orders and complaints and hundreds of dollars in unpaid fees and penalties. After hearing the litany of complaints by the animal control officer and others, it seems the Selectboard’s action was justified, and maybe overdue.
At a hearing in September 2016, two of the dogs were listed as nuisance dogs and were ordered to be restrained at all times. But they weren’t, and complaints continued.
So, the time has come. By her own inaction, Rauch has forced the Selectboard to order the surrender of her dogs — a male Pomeranian Shih Tzu named Louie and a Pomeranian Chihuahua named Charlie.
The violations include failure to restrain and failure to license and vaccinate all the dogs, and failure to pay $302 for licenses for the dogs for 2017 and 2018 and $550 in citations.
By law, all dog owners in town are supposed to license dogs after showing proof of rabies vaccination between Jan. 1 to Feb. 28. While most dog owners probably find the licensing a chore each year, the license and rabies requirement is for public safety. You can contract rabies from a small dog as well as a large one.
We concur with Selectwoman Rebecca Bialecki who noted, “If these dogs aren’t licensed or vaccinated, they are putting others at risk.”
During sworn testimony at a recent Selectboard hearing, Rauch’s neighbor Harry Whaley, who introduced himself as the “tortured neighbor,” said he has been dealing with the problem for three years. He said Rausch’s dogs come on his property, his children cannot go outside and his own dogs “tear the blinds off the windows” trying to get to the Rausch dogs in his yard.
“(Rausch) had three dogs the last time we were there. She now has six,” Whaley told the Selectboard. Animal Control Officer Jennifer Arsenault said Rausch indicated the extra dogs belong to a friend but also told her she can’t control her own and certainly can’t be counted on to watch others.
The dogs reportedly bark constantly and aggressively, coming up to children. That’s where most parents would draw the line sharply, and so did town officials, and we support that stance.