Owner Guilty of Failing to Confine Her Dog

A Fallbrook woman was convicted Friday of failing to keep her Doberman pinscher confined after it had been declared vicious.

Terry Borrell faces a possible six-month jail sentence after the verdict by a Vista Municipal Court jury.

Borrell will stand trial again in March for refusing to deliver her 6-year-old dog, Saint, to a hearing before Department of Animal Control officials to re-evaluate just how vicious the dog is. If she refuses, that’s another possible six-month jail sentence.

Borrell said Friday that she’s still willing to go to jail for her Saint because the alternative, she believes, is canine death row.

County officials say that because the dog was declared vicious in 1988--for having threatened passers-by in Borrell’s Fallbrook neighborhood--and since then has been involved in another act of viciousness, it’s time to bring Borrell and Saint back into a hearing room to decide what to do next with the Doberman. The dog’s destruction is a possibility, officials say.

The latest incident occurred last summer, when a snarling Saint was reported by two meter readers for San Diego Gas & Electric Co. as being loose on Borrell’s street, its hair standing on end, its teeth bared. They kept the dog at bay, they said, by swinging sticks topped with rubber balls.

The two meter readers, Steven Omitt and Jeff Hall, testified that they had complained to Borrell half a dozen times or more in past months about Saint’s bad attitude toward them as he prowled the street in front of her house.

Finally, they testified, they reported the dog to animal control officials. By the time authorities responded to the scene, the dog was gone, whisked into hiding by Borrell herself. Saint has been in hiding ever since.

At the time, authorities cited Borrell for failing to keep the dog contained, a condition of the hearing when Saint was declared vicious.

Twice before, said Deputy Dist. Atty. Gary Hoover, Borrell had pleaded no-contest to similar charges. Each time she was ordered to contain the dog. This made the third time.

It took a jury in Vista Municipal Judge Luther Leeger’s courtroom less than 30 minutes to find Borrell guilty Friday, after a 1 1/2-day trial. Borrell’s attorney, D. Wayne Brechtel, did not present a defense.

Borrell will be sentenced March 6.