Don’t feel bad the ACO Don’t feel bad the ACO is terrible here. My daughter was home and called me and said there was seven dogs in a pack in our yard. Mostly hounds but two labs. No tracking collars on any of them. Actually only two of them had a collar. No tags one had a red collar and one had an orange. My daughter went outside to check where the goats were and the dogs growled at her. So she called me and I called animal control and my mother-in-law went over there to help. When animal control got there he saw that one dog had an orange collar and said there’s hunting dogs and there’s nothing he can do about it. My mother-in-law had to actually ask him can you at least get the two that are growling at my daughter out of the goat pen. So I guess it’s OK to just have dogs randomly come in your yard. Only one of them had an orange collar no tracking collars and two of them were labs so I don’t suspect they were all hunting dogs anyway. My daughter usually lets the chickens out about an hour before that thank goodness that day she forgot. Wasn’t too worried about my goats they don’t put up with any crap from any dogsYep. He didn't even know that chickens were legal when I moved in. I called him to talk about the fact that I was getting them - trying to play nice, ya know? - and he was like "Chickens are illegal and we'll have to remove them from your property". And then I told him I was staring right at the ordinances listed online and updated that year and that they weren't and I was getting them, and basically that they could try to remove them over my lawyers cold dead hands.
I don't know if the same guy still works there, but they're not a good or useful group anyhow. The ACOs do nothing about loose animals that aren't dogs. They won't catch stray cats that poop in your gardens or harass your animals, they won't even TNR them if they're not fixed, even though letting your cat off your own property is illegal. I've showed off the extra-bold deer the past winter if you recall, we are expected to just live with them even if they are bucks in rut and even though they cause regular car accidents. We are also expected to live with and do our "due vigilance" to protect kids, cats and small dogs from the local coyotes. I suspect that if a bear showed up they would call the county animal control and make them deal with it.
On the other hand, they're also super useless about enforcing the stupid laws on the books, so it's not like they're just selectively bad to harass people... Like there used to be a law on the books that you couldn't own non-cat-and-dog animals in your home. Like pet rabbits were illegal with the way the law was phrased, but it was never enforced. And there's a law on the books that dogs can't be left outdoors under any circumstances for more than 3 hours at a time. Super unenforceable and also not enforced, people leave their dogs on tie outs or in fenced lawns all day long with nobody snooping or writing up fines.
So the TL;DR is that the groundhog problem is mine to solve... But humanely because animal cruelty laws ARE enforced.
