‘Dog people’ tear into new animal control law

A contingent of “dog people” unleashed their ire on the Waterbury Select Board Monday night over a new animal control ordinance.

“It’s wordy, full of legalese, unnecessarily complicated and incomplete,” said Bill Hall, a member of Waterbury Unleashed, the nonprofit that helped to bring the new dog park to town with partial funding from the municipality.

“And, for lack of a better word, it’s anti-dog,” Hall said in a lengthy discussion of the town’s leash law. “The business of town government can be really tedious and boring, (but) I’m bored and I’m here doing something I’m attached to.”

Among complaints from Hall are the ordinance’s repeated references to dogs as domestic pets. “There’s no reason not to refer to these animals as dogs — wolf-hybrid included,” said Hall. “What other animal is going to be walking on a leash on the sidewalk?”

Hall’s analysis of the ordinance included a reference to Robert Redford’s 1992 film “A River Runs Through It,” in which Tom Skerritt’s character tells his son to cut his homework essay again by half.

“Nothing makes writing clearer than eliminating unnecessary words,” Hall said.

Further into the presentation, Hall went to the white board as a staff member raised the multimedia screen in the meeting room above the Main Street firehouse, noting four separate legal jurisdictions for dogs. The new ordinance is overly complex and difficult for law-abiding dog owners to follow, he said.

A couple of Hall’s associates at the meeting agreed the ordinance is overly complex and will confuse people of “varying levels of intelligence.”

Municipal manager Bill Shepeluk defended the new ordinance as a tailoring of a model law from the Vermont League of Cities and Towns, and clarified some confusion about jurisdictional boundaries.

“When you talk about the public park ... the rest of the Ice Center complex is not a public park,” Shepeluk said. “The dog park is a public park; the surrounding area is not a park.”

Under municipal law, dog owners must keep their domestic pets leashed unless walking along secondary roads, where they still must maintain voice command — and no dogs are ever allowed on playing fields. Only at the new dog park will dog owners be permitted to unleash their dogs for raucous and joyful play.

Shepeluk noted the select board decided to require leashes for dogs in public parks, an additional restriction over the old law.

“If you don’t think that dogs should be on a leash in a public park, that’s fine,” Shepeluk said. “It’s not because there are too many definitions — if it says it’s a park, it’s a park.”

Select board member Chris Viens called the new ordinance a practical compromise between dog people and others.

“I keep hearing the term restricted (but) when people choose to buy an animal — a dog — that’s their dog,” he said. “I’m not anti-dog. ... I’m going to bat for all of the people that don’t want your dog around them.”

The need to protect private property owners from unscrupulous dog owners failing to clean up after their pets on Randall Street was the genesis for the tougher law, according to animal control officer Peter Turmelle.

Aside from that, “we have had a dog incident every month for at least the last 18 months,” Turmelle said, enumerating dog fights, a dog killed in traffic, a man “treed on his tractor,” another man prevented from going out to his woodshed, children afraid to play in their own yards, and a lady who dared not come off her back porch.

“Every single one of these has been a dog off-leash,” Turmelle said. “But the first thing I hear is how lovable the dog is, almost as if they’re reading from the same script.”

Municipal clerk Carla Lawrence also defended the new ordinance. “The other extreme was to ban dogs from parks, but the board didn’t want that,” she said.

Select board member Mark Frier said he wants Waterbury to be dog-friendly, but some dog owners need to be more respectful.

“To be fair to everyone, not everyone is a ... responsible pet owner,” he said. “I see dogs in the cemetery.”

Viens said the animal control officer before Turmelle had left in frustration, given the law’s lack of teeth.