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County Residents With Pet Peeves Have Their Day in Animal Court : Nuisance hearings: Suspects from cats and dogs to roosters are charged with such offenses as biting a neighbor or barking.

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TIMES STAFF WRITER

One day every month, the dimly lit basement of the Ventura County Administration Building takes on the appearance of a courtroom.

The key difference is that the accused on trial are animals--usually dogs, but sometimes cats and on occasion a chicken or a parrot.

The crimes are also not like those discussed in a normal court. Here, the suspects are accused of such offenses as biting a neighbor or howling at the moon.

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This is Ventura County’s animal court, where a county official known as the poundmaster uses Solomonic judgment to settle neighborhood squabbles over animal nuisance problems, such as vicious dogs and noisy birds.

In the past four years, Ventura County Poundmaster Kathy Jenks has presided over almost 400 cases, including a dispute involving a cat that bit a woman, a rooster that kept neighbors awake and countless squabbles over dogs that either bit, howled, barked or terrorized children.

In many cases the testimony has escalated into name-calling and cursing. A few have ended in scuffles.

Jenks said the case that most sticks in her mind is memorable not because of the animals--two dogs accused of biting a neighbor--but because of their owner.

“During the hearing, the man declared that he was no longer a member of the human race and was now a dog,” she said. “He barked for the next hour.”

It took six sheriff’s deputies to drag the man out of the chamber, she said. The hearing continued in the man’s absence and his dogs were found to be a nuisance and ordered destroyed.

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“Sometimes I feel like I’m a psychiatrist, and all this is crazy,” Jenks said.

As in a court of law, testimony is taken in animal court, witnesses are questioned and evidence is examined. Yet, the animals are never allowed into the hearing chambers--and for good reason. Some aren’t housebroken.

The nuisance hearings were established by county officials four years ago to reduce the number of animal-related disputes being heard by county judges. The cities of Sacramento and Los Angeles use similar hearings to address their animal nuisance squabbles.

During hearings last week, Jenks heard a case involving two Great Danes named Monster and Bubba who were accused of barking excessively and biting a neighborhood poodle after they broke out of their back yard in Thousand Oaks.

Each animal weighs more than 150 pounds and while standing on its hind legs can peer over a fence six feet tall, according to neighbors.

Bonny DeCarlo, the owner of the poodle that was allegedly attacked, failed to show up for her hearing but sent her neighbors, Vincent Fly and Marianne Cline, to testify about the barking.

“They are the loudest dogs I’ve ever heard,” Fly testified.

“It’s like living next door to the pound with those dogs,” Cline said, adding that the barking has kept her family from enjoying their house.

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“We have some outdoor furniture and we sometimes used to go in the back yard to eat dinner when the weather is really warm,” she said. “That would be unthinkable with those dogs because they are just too noisy.”

The dogs’ owner, Linda Fields, acknowledged that the barking is a problem. In addition, she agreed to pay for the poodle’s veterinary bills. But Fields said she had hoped the problem could be settled among the neighbors. “I really wish these people had come to contact me about this,” she said. “I’m not some nasty witch they can’t talk to.”

After an hour of informal testimony in the dimly lit chamber, Jenks came to a decision: Because there had been no testimony on the poodle attack, the dogs were cleared of that charge. However, Jenks found the two dogs guilty of barking excessively.

“These people have to be allowed the comfortable enjoyment of their homes,” Jenks said after making her findings.

Fields was ordered either to have the dogs’ vocal cords surgically cut or equip the dogs with an electronic training collar that shocks the animals every time they bark.

Fly and Cline seemed content with the ruling. “Hopefully, the problem is old news now,” Fly said.

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Fields called the penalty extreme but declined to say whether she would choose the surgery or the shock treatment. Under the rules of the county’s animal court, decisions can be appealed to Ventura County Superior Court.

Like most of the disputes, Jenks said the Fields case “could have been avoided if the animal owner had some consideration of her neighbors.”

The disputes are heard by Jenks only after animal control officers have failed to resolve the problem by talking with animal owners and the neighbors.

At the request of the complainant or the owner, Jenks can issue subpoenas for witnesses or evidence. Any person who ignores the subpoena can be found guilty of a misdemeanor.

If Jenks finds that an animal is a threat to neighbors, she can order the animal locked up. In the most extreme cases, she can order it put to death.

However, animal control officials said there have only been two or three such cases. Because it is a misdemeanor to ignore the poundmaster’s ruling, animal owners usually abide by her verdicts.

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The rules that govern evidence in the animal court are more relaxed than those required in a normal court of law. Jenks allows such evidence as petitions from neighbors and handwritten notes that document the time and the day that barking or other nuisances occurred.

Complainants and animal owners can do away with the legal jargon and speak in an informal fashion. They are allowed to question each other. Sometimes the exchanges become heated.

An example was a case last week in which Santa Paula residents Nicholas J. Corsinita and Willard Wombold complained about the continuous barking of a neighbor’s dogs, Sadie and Pasha.

“Nothing has changed. It’s gotten worse, especially yesterday. Yesterday it seemed like someone was needling the dogs,” Corsinita told Jenks.

“Was it you?” snapped Robert Jensen, the dogs’ owner.

Later in his testimony, Corsinita said he has received several obscene telephone calls that he believes were in response to his complaint.

“We’ve had some nuisance calls telling us to drop dead,” he said. “On another one, my wife is too ashamed to tell me what they said to her on the phone. To this day I don’t know what the comment was . . . and I think it was a lady on the other end of the phone.”

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In that case, Jenks declined to make an immediate ruling, saying she wanted time to study the evidence and a transcript of the hearing. She said she also wanted to give the two sides time to calm down.

For that reason, Jenks said about half of her findings are sent through the mail several weeks after the hearings. “We’ve had them come to blows in the hall,” she said.

In another case last week, Jenks heard a dispute about the barking of a Labrador mix named Muffy. The dog’s barking had caused an argument that became so heated that the police in Thousand Oaks had been called to intervene.

Robb Quint, a Latin teacher, told Jenks that the barking “has been going on for months and months.”

He said he tried “at first to settle the matter peaceably with the neighbors” but was only met with hostility and a door slammed on his arm.

The dog’s owners, Steve and Linda Steuer, called Quint’s testimony an exaggeration.

Linda Steuer said Quint was belligerent when he came to her house to complain about the barking. She said he frightened her so much that she slammed the door on him and called the police, who briefly questioned Quint before leaving.

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“I was in fear for myself just because of the fact that he stands there pounding on the door and trying to shove a paper in my face and he is halfway through the door . . .,” she said. “I pushed the door, I got it closed and I called the police.”

Steve Steuer said the problem is his neighbor--not his dog.

“I’m willing to work with someone who is reasonable but I can’t deal with this Mr. Quint,” he said. “If I can take an oath or whatever I’m just saying there is no problem with an excessive barking dog.”

Like some other cases heard last week, the barking dog caper has not yet been decided by Jenks. She said she will mail the Steuers her verdict sometime in the next 30 days.

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