Dog gone?
Too many pets add to too many troubles
Staff writer
When Robin Wilcox fled an abusive marriage in August, she brought a small menagerie to her parents’ house in Goessel: three kids and two dogs.
Her parents, Steve and Deborah Wilcox, already owned four cats and a dog.
While it was a lot to fit under one roof — Robin and the kids sleep on a couch and the floor — the animals and kids got along well.
Still, there was a problem.
Goessel enforces a two-dog limit per household. While the ordinance is not out of the ordinary, it is strict by county standards. Hillsboro, Marion, and Peabody allow three dogs.
Burns, a town half the size of Goessel, allows six. Tiny Ramona does not have a limit in its city codes.
The two-dog policy helps Goessel city clerk Jennifer Bliss make sure every animal is tagged.
“It keeps it to a manageable amount on our end, because that’s something that I have to manage and maintain throughout the year,” she said.
The policy had been in place for a long time, said councilmember Sam Griffin.
“We’ve never had an issue,” he said. “Some people want more, some people want less. It’s like anything else.”
After Steve Wilcox went to the city and explained the situation — his daughter wouldn’t be living with her parents for long, just until she could find and afford a place to stay — the household received temporary permission to keep three dogs.
But five months later, Robin still has not found a place.
When her temporary allowance expired Dec. 9, her request for an extension was denied by the city council.
Part of the reason for the denial, Bliss said, was that Wilcox had received multiple noise complaints regarding Jax, a mastiff-great Dane.
“One of the stipulations for keeping the three dogs was that there would be no nuisance violations,” Bliss said. “They felt that she had kind of broken the rules that we had laid out.”
Wilcox acknowledged that Jax makes a lot of noise.
“She’s got a big bark,” she said. “She likes to bark. She likes to talk and find out what’s going on.”
Wilcox does not regard the barking as sufficient reason to send one of her dogs away.
“In a 24-hour period, my dog spends less than an hour outside,” she said. “I’m not saying it hasn’t happened, but it just sucks, and it’s right before Christmas, and my kids have to give up one of their dogs.”
Adding to the strangeness of the case is that the city cannot tell Wilcox to get rid of a particular dog. It can only enforce the two-dog ordinance.
Wilcox is not getting rid of Jax, to whom her son is extremely attached.
“He sleeps with her every night,” she said.
Instead, Wilcox is planning to give up her other dog, Farrah, named for actress Farrah Fawcett.
Farrah may be able to stay with Wilcox’s nieces in Newton, but Wilcox isn’t sure.
“They also have dogs,” she said. “I’m not gonna ask them to get rid of their dogs if my dog doesn’t get along.”
Wilcox said she was heartbroken that her exemption was taken away.
“It really isn’t the ordinance I’m trying to fight. I just want to keep my dogs until I can move out,” she said. “I probably need until tax time to actually get on my feet and get deposit money and stuff to get our own place.”
Sam Griffin, who lives behind the Wilcox home, said barking had been an issue.
“Oh, they’re loud,” he said of the dogs. “I hear them all the time.”
He said he took Wilcox’s emotional state “into real consideration,” but cited the complaints and the time since the exemption as a reason for the denial.
“It’s fair and it sucks at the same time,” Griffin said. “And it sucks to have to be in a position where you have to make decisions, but you gotta do it.”
Other neighbors on the block had mixed opinions about the Wilcox dogs.
“Can’t say it’s been a real big deal to me,” Rick Woelk said. “I like dogs as much as anyone else. But it can get really annoying, I understand that.”
Valarie Guerrero said the barking bothered her when she was outside, but that she couldn’t hear it in her house.
Wilcox said she expects complaints to keep coming from one particular neighbor.
“My question is, for the guy who keeps complaining about it: Do you get mad when your chickens cluck?” she said. “It flabbergasts me that it’s a problem during daylight hours that the dog barks. You know, kids play, construction happens.”
Wilcox is trying to rent a place in Goessel — her children are enrolled in town schools — but hasn’t had much luck.
Her future, she said, is very uncertain.
Canine disputes, she said, have tainted her view of the town, where she lived for the first 30 years of her life.
“We’re going through some of the worst moments of our lives, and now we’ve got to get rid of our dog because she barks,” she said. “I can understand you don’t want to walk past a house that has five dogs screaming and barking at you. At the same time, where’s the line? Some sympathy, some compassion for my children and what we’re going through. There seems to be a lack of that.”