Dog Gets Run of the Ranch; Owners Sent to Doghouse

Patricia Dalby wanted to keep Guinness the Rottweiler in Newport Beach. Her ex-boyfriend, C. Brooks Brann, demanded that the pooch join him at his 10-acre ranch in Montana.

The judge overseeing their pet custody case had other ideas.

“I am inclined to take the dog away from both of you--maybe to Utah--to give him a new home,” said Orange County Superior Court Judge Geoffrey T. Glass in a stern lecture from the bench. “Shame on both of you for having this case come to this point. . . . I find neither [of you] good masters to the dog.”

Glass then threatened to put the dog up for auction if the couple didn’t work out a settlement within 30 minutes. The couple and their attorneys immediately huddled and returned with a deal.

As Dalby grew teary-eyed, her attorney told the judge that she had agreed to let her former boyfriend take the dog with him to live on the ranch. She will get to visit Guinness two weeks each year.

“It was the lesser of two evils,” said Dalby, 56. “I had no choice.”

For his part, Brann said he can’t wait to pick up the dog this Sunday for the trip to Montana. “I’ll give a bone, and he’ll trample me,” Brann said of the dog he named after the potent Irish brew. “I’ll get a big lick on the face.”

The case comes at a time when attorneys nationwide are pushing courts to reconsider age-old laws classifying pets as property. While some judges’ rulings in recent years have taken the welfare of animals into consideration, Judge Glass said this case was strictly a property issue.

“Pets are cherished by their owners far beyond the recognition of the law,” he said. “No matter how hard we try to project on them human qualities, they are property.”

The judge then made the couple stand before him, and he chastised them for not being able to settle their dispute.

The custody battle began when Brann moved out of the house he shared with Dalby in Newport Beach. He filed the lawsuit last year, after Dalby refused to give him the dog. Since then, the Rottweiler has shared Dalby’s backyard with another Rottweiler.

During the three-day trial, attorneys tried various means to prove ownership.

David Marble, Brann’s San Francisco-based attorney, said the Rottweiler belonged to Brann because he was the one who wanted him in the first place. Brann, he said, also paid for the dog’s food and veterinary bills.

At one point, Marble asked the judge to allow the dog to make a courtroom appearance to show the strong bond between Guinness and Brann.

But the judge rejected the request, saying a dog’s affectionate display did not prove ownership.

Robert Newman, Dalby’s Santa Ana-based attorney, said the dog was registered in her son’s name, and should therefore belong to her. He also claimed that it was Dalby who was responsible for getting the dog from a rescue shelter.

The judge found few of these arguments convincing. (“I don’t want to rub your noses in it.”) He ruled that the couple held co-ownership of the dog, and said he was inclined to auction off the dog, as is commonly done in cases of disputed property.

Thanks to the subsequent compromise, “Now the dog will not have a dark cloud over him,” the judge said. “There was no right solution.”