Tuesday, April 03, 2007

I won

Yesterday the animal control officer made his return visit. He wasn't nearly as nice as before but that might be because he had another officer riding along.

He started out by informing me that we did not build it properly. I was just a tad bit frustrated since I specifically asked, when he made his first visit, if it had to be done a specific way. According to him there was no specifications, she just had to have a structure.

He tried to argue that we only had 1 4x8 sheet of plywood. I invited him over to the shelter and showed him that we indeed did have 2 (not that there are any regulations requiring 2). Then he proceeded to tell us that he had not seen one built in this configuration. Honestly I couldn't care less what he had seen before. I just stood there and stared at him. Finally he threw his hands up and said that since there was no specification of how it was to be built that he couldn't do anything further! Hooray!

He did snoop around asking questions about the horse, wanting to know if she was a mustang. He even went so far as to surreptitiously look under her mane for the freeze branding put on mustangs by the BLM. Since she is not a mustang there is no requirements for the height of the fence needed. Hopefully we will now be left in peace for awhile.

As he left he did mention that he called the person who filed the complaint and asked if he had been by to see the shelter. It seems this person hasn't cared enough to check that anything has been done, and he doesn't even live up here. Frustrating! Obviously the reporting person didn't really care about the horse or he would have checked up on the situation.

Because I have little trust in the bureaucracy we are attempting to get a copy of the specific regulations pertaining to the types of animals we own. The animal control officer made comments both times about the amount of manure in the horse enclosure. It is cleaned out daily but it doesn't stay clean for very long. The ordinances say it needs to be cleaned out weekly so we are doing more than what is required. It's amazing how difficult it is to find information on the requirements. It's like they don't want you to know just so that they continue to have a job. We have been unable to find any mention of requirements for a horse shelter...and it wouldn't surprise me to find that there aren't any.

1 comment:

Elizabeth said...

Kim,
You can move here any time!

We have little, if any, regulation in our county. Our neighbor's bull died and laid in the field for weeks. Still not sure if he cleaned it up or if the vultures finally finished the carcass!

One of dh's uncles was complaining about a junk collector in the community and how we needed a law. I jumped right up and said, "No way!" One of the plusses of living here is being able to do what we want and that means putting up with folks who have different tastes in lawn ornaments than we do. :)

Elizabeth