Thousand Oaks : Miniature Horse Issue Is Back in the Saddle

Thousand Oaks lost one legal battle over a miniature horse named Ragtime and has decided to enter into another with a man who keeps two of the small horses in his back yard.

City officials want Greg Bowlay to remove the miniature horses from his yard on Calle Castano because they say his 13,000-square-foot lot is too small.

Deputy City Atty. Nancy Kierstyn Schreiner said the city wants to let the community know that miniature horses are unwelcome in densely populated residential areas, despite a judge’s decision allowing Patty and Richard Fairchild to keep their miniature horse, Ragtime, at their home on Shady Brook Drive.

Bowlay, who has been issued two municipal citations for having the horses, said he plans to battle the city in court. He has pleaded not guilty, and the case is scheduled to be heard by a Ventura County municipal judge on April 10.

Schreiner said she is confident that Thousand Oaks can win the fight against Bowlay because it has eliminated the loopholes in its ordinance regulating miniature horses that resulted in the 3-year losing struggle in the Ragtime case.

In September, 1987, a Ventura County municipal judge dismissed the city’s case against the Fairchilds because, he said, the part of the Thousand Oaks zoning code dealing with horses was poorly worded.

As a result, the city adopted a new ordinance prohibiting a single horse of any size on a lot smaller than 20,000 square feet. That stipulation was missing from the previous ordinance, Schreiner said.

Thousand Oaks then cited the Fairchilds under the revised ordinance. But a municipal judge ruled that, because of Ragtime’s size, the miniature horse was considered a domestic pet under city regulations and could remain at the Shady Brook Drive home.

Since then, the city again changed its ordinance. The definition of a domestic pet was altered to include dogs, cats, tropical fish, small rodents and small reptiles. It defined miniature horses, as well as pot-bellied pigs and other small animals, as livestock and prohibited them in densely populated areas.

Bowlay said the city is trying to “save face” after losing the Ragtime battle by unfairly targeting him. But Schreiner said the case has nothing to do with the city’s pride. Her office has received several complaints from neighbors who say Bowlay’s horses stink, she said.