[Cagdu] FW: California: L.A. Times Article on Apparent Attitudes Toward Dogs

[Tina Thomas]

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Subject: California: L.A. Times Article on Apparent Attitudes Toward Dogs



Los Angeles Times: Neighbor vs. dog: a war of the
woofs

latimes.com
http://www.latimes.
<http://www.latimes.com/features/home/la-hm-dogs22feb22,0,6654749.story?coll
=la-home-headlines>
com/features/home/la-hm-dogs22feb22,0,6654749.story?coll=la-home-headlines

BETWEEN US

Neighbor vs. dog: a war of the woofs
Tensions flare over canines -- and the noise and mess
they can make. More than 1 million live in the region,
raising the question: pet or peeve?
By Bettijane Levine
Times Staff Writer

February 22, 2007

FOR Southern Californians at odds with their
neighbors, the source of the problem is often simple:
It barks night and day, pees on your flowers, poops on
your lawn. It escapes from its yard to terrorize cats
and terrify kids.

Of all the ills that beset the urban scene, the
domesticated dog would seem least likely to offend.
Man's best friend, and all that. Yet here in L.A., it
is a reason friendly neighbors turn hostile to one
another, a wedge that reduces peaceful coexistence to
anger, and sometimes war.

Last month someone tossed poisoned food into the
backyard of a West Hollywood house with two dogs. "The
little one, Giant, used to bark endlessly. The big
one, Baby, you never heard," says a maintenance man
who works next door and who loved Baby. The
perpetrator, believed to be a neighbor irritated by
the
barking, tried to silence Giant but killed Baby
instead. The worker next door, who asked that his
identity not be revealed out of fear of retribution,
has posted signs on Orlando Avenue asking neighbors
for help finding who took the life of his canine
friend.

An extreme case, perhaps, but hardly unprecedented. In
North Hollywood early this month, police arrested a
man on suspicion of trying to silence a noisy
boxer by tossing meatballs laced with rat poison into
the yard.

As Los Angeles grows, disputes over dogs are expected
to get only more prevalent. County animal control
officials say they do not tabulate canine complaints
separately, but anyone who listens to the rants of
dogless neighbors or sees the militant don't-poop-here
signs on front lawns can't help but sense a growing
rift over what some see as a four-legged nuisance.

No authoritative count of the local dog population
exists because more than half are believed to be
unlicensed. But Michelle Roache, deputy director of
the Los Angeles County Department of Animal Care &
Control, estimates the number to be at least 1 million
in her county alone. About 36% of all households
own a dog, and as the human population rises, its
canine community keeps pace.

It's not just a matter of quantity, Roache adds. As
density increases, more conflicts arise because of
sheer proximity.

"L.A. is changing. Neighborhoods that used to be all
single-family dwellings now have condos and apartments
going up," she says. "There's that whole new
residential loft area in downtown L.A., which is one
of many with an increased population of pets."

That means more poop, more barks, more dogs running
loose, she says. And more confrontations.

Cabrini Schnyder, who lives with three dogs in a loft
at 5th Street and Broadway, has appointed herself a
kind of poop monitor for the loft district downtown.
She takes mental notes on dog owners who don't pick up
after their pets, and she plans to find a neighborly
way to encourage greater cleanliness.

"This is a great new community, but I see it becoming
uncomfortable for people who don't have dogs," she
says. "They get up, get dressed and want a pleasant
walk to work. What do they see? I'm talking huge piles
of poop."

Off-leash dogs are another problem. Lisa Burton of
West Hills says a trip to the local park playground
with her son Adam, 4, often sets her on edge because
some neighbors let dogs roam freely.

"Little kids walking from cars to the playground get
scared and start to scream," Burton says. "Then the
dogs do their business right there on the grass.
I can't let my son play on grass filled with germs."
She's found herself losing control and screaming at
dog owners, she says.

Scott Robinson, a Woodland Hills real estate broker,
recalls a neighbor so incensed by deposits on his lawn
that he rigged a special sprinkler with an electric
eye, drenching all dogs and their walkers who set foot
on his property.

IT'S no surprise, then, that one category of mediation
services is related to canine disputes.

"The dog owner sees the pet as a family member; the
dogless neighbor sees the dog as a dog - with
everything that brings, meaning noise and mess," says
Mary Culbert, director of the Loyola Law School Center
for Conflict Resolution, a nonprofit mediation program
for L.A. County.

"As L.A. gets more densely populated, whatever one
neighbor does impacts the other neighbor more
intensely. Sometimes it starts with a small dog
problem
and escalates to more than that - loud voices, harsh
words and threats."

Fear floods Liz Sinderbrand's voice as she tells how a
neighbor tried to have her dogs taken away.
Sinderbrand has lived in the same house in Calabasas
for 30 years, she says, the last 10 of them with Sam,
a black bearded collie, and Joe, a rat terrier.

"I never had problems, no neighbors had a bad word to
say," she says. Then one day a note on the door from
county animal control said her dogs were disturbing
the peace. The complaint came from a neighbor in a
nearby building. Sinderbrand went to talk with him,
hoping to make peace, but to no avail.

"Their favorite place to sun themselves was on my
balcony," Sinderbrand says of Sam and Joe. "I don't
let them out there any more."

Disputes often begin with the perception that
neighbors aren't acting responsibly or respecting each
others' boundaries. The most common complaint is
noise,
Loyola's Culbert says. Dogless people may want peace
and quiet, while dog owners may be willing to put up
with a healthy bark - or, in some cases, a constant
racket. Is barking part of the urban landscape, like
noise from passing cars?

"Our job is to help each party understand the
perspective of the other," Culbert says. "Once they
understand, we get them to talk about solutions - what
each is willing to do to help solve the problem."

Some dog owners are so convinced of their pet's charms
that they ask to bring the dogs to the mediation,
Culbert says. They want their neighbor to know
and love their pet. And when that tactic fails (no
animals are allowed in mediation), there's always a
lawyer willing to help.

Shannon Keith, 33, of Studio City devotes her practice
to animal cases. These days barking dogs and escaped
animals keep her plenty busy, she says.

"The typical case is when a dog gets out of the yard
and scares a neighbor or bites a person or another
animal," she says, adding she can't help but think
some owners are too righteous. "A few clients I've
felt were irresponsible because the problem had
happened again and again. In those cases, I actually
make an agreement with them that they'll correct their
own behavior. It's not the dog's fault, but theirs."

The city and county of Los Angeles have separate
codes. In both, Keith says, dogs can be taken away for
being a public nuisance - barking excessively, getting
loose, injuring people or harming property. The county
code states: "Every person who maintains, permits or
allows a public nuisance to exist upon his
or her property or premises . is guilty of a
misdemeanor."

MOST experts agree that excessive barking usually
occurs when a dog is distressed. As much as a neighbor
may feel sorry for an animal's unhappiness or anxiety,
hour upon hour of barking can turn sympathy into
seething resentment.

West Hollywood dog owner Suzanne Camarillo has been
surprised by letters to a local paper commenting on
the poisoning of the North Hollywood boxer.

"The letters seem to sympathize with the poisoner,"
she says. "I can't understand that thinking. If a
neighbor's baby has colic and cries loudly and
incessantly,
do we have sympathy for someone who poisons the baby
to shut it up? Dogs are just as innocent as that
baby."

Lawrence Palinkas, professor at USC whose area of
specialty is people who live and work in extreme
environments, says in highly populated urban areas,
barking
dogs might not disturb most people but can send a
select few into a tailspin. "People who see themselves
as isolated or confined have a way of magnifying
very small, very insignificant things to the point
where they become irrational," he says.

On the other hand, Palinkas says, constant loud noise
has been used as a form of torture. To some,
inescapable barking might qualify.

"You have no opportunity to sleep," he says. "You're
fatigued. Your ability to think clearly is impaired."
Under those circumstances, he says, an otherwise
reasonable adult could be driven to extreme - and
reprehensible - behavior.

"All the defenses we normally employ, the socially
polite things we do to maintain good relationships,
are affected," he says.

HOW noisy was Giant, the West Hollywood target of a
poisoning attempt? It depends on whom you ask.
Neighbors on either side of the house say they weren't
bothered by the barking. They have dogs of their own.
Neighbors in apartments behind the house, however, say
the racket disturbed their tranquillity.

John Osborne, who lives in and manages a building
behind the one where the dog was killed, says the
yapping for hours on end was an irritant. But Giant
certainly wasn't alone.

"Where we once had two side-by-side bungalows,
developers are building big upscale apartments, and
bringing in people with dogs that are cooped up and
barking
all day," Osborne says.

Some neighbors "can be driven to desperation," says
Kathryn Turk, West Hollywood community coordinator for
Dispute Resolution Services, a nonprofit organization
affiliated with the L.A. County Bar Assn.

She had a recent case in which a woman who worked odd
hours kept two barking dogs in a house next to an
apartment building.

"The neighbors couldn't sleep, called animal control,
code enforcement, the police," Turk says. "She tried
keeping the dogs in her bedroom, where she thought
the noise would be less, but it didn't work. One
neighbor threatened to shoot her dogs."

The dog owner and two sets of complaining neighbors
finally sat down with a mediator and pledged to stop
insulting and threatening each other. The complaining
neighbors agreed to document exactly what times the
barking occurred and to record the noise, so the
absent owner could hear it.

"They eventually realized that it was another
neighbor's dog who was causing the problem," Turk
says. The other dog barked first and excited the
others.

Turk has a case right now involving a dogless man
whose West Hollywood apartment is close to the
sidewalk. Every morning a young woman walks her dog to
the patch of grass below his patio and offers her
daily encouragement. "He hears her say, 'Do poo poo
now' over and over again," Turk says. "She carries
no bag to pick it up; his window is usually open. You
can imagine how he feels."

bettijane.levine@ <mailto:bettijane.levine%40latimes.com> latimes.com

*

(INFOBOX BELOW)

Do-it-yourself dog mediation

Sometimes neighbors ignore the obvious. Follow some
simple steps, experts say, and you may be able to
resolve your dog dispute before it gets out of hand.

Communicate. If a dog disturbs your peace or your
property, don't blame the dog. Phone or write the
owner. Be friendly. Explain when and why you are being
disturbed, and offer to discuss the problem. Say you
hope to work together.

Don't be defensive. If you're the dog owner, don't
belittle or ignore a neighbor's complaint. Listen and
look for a solution. When appropriate, enlist the
neighbors' help. Ask them to make notes on when and
where disturbances occur. Then think about fixing
those problems by changing the way you care for the
dog.

Be reasonable. If dog owner and complainer are
open-minded and polite, solutions can be found. Some
dogs offend only because their owners allow them to
do so. Complainers offend when they yell, threaten and
don't give the dog owner a fair chance. If all else
fails, take the dispute to a mediation service.

- Bettijane Levine

Copyright 2007 Los Angeles Times |

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