Jan DuBusky rises from the defense side of the table and hands each of the judges a copy of her statement. She also hands out a document pointing to the "lack of credibility" of the prosecution -- who in this case are her sleep-deprived neighbors in Ellicott City.
DuBusky returns to her seat at the table, where she has displayed a framed picture of the accused, her four innocent-looking Yorkshire terriers. Their crime: barking in the middle of the night. Loudly.
"Sometimes they need to go out during the night," their owner pleads.
The members of the Howard County Animal Matters Hearing Board appear unmoved. There's no defense they haven't heard in this suburban court of last resort, where neighborliness can meet its most severe test.
If the barking won't stop, if the ducks won't stop quacking, pet owners can lose more than an invitation to the next cul-de-sac barbecue. They might end up in what some call "doggie court," defending everything from their pets' bowel movements to the time they put out the water bowl at night.
"They like to bring in photographs and videotape and character witnesses for their animals sometimes. Now I'm just waiting for the DNA to be presented," said board Chairwoman Martha Gagnon.
One woman, when faced with a neighbor's incriminating photographs of a suspicious Rottweiler roaming free, denied that was her dog. In another case, a man insisted he didn't know how his dog could have dug his way into an adjacent yard, ignoring his neighbors' photographic evidence of canine-sized holes under his fence.
The owner of one little dog, Duncan the Dragon Slayer, brought a friend to testify on the pooch's behalf.
Anyone searching for evidence of the breakdown of the community in suburban America need look no further than the monthly meetings in Ellicott City of Howard's seven-member Animal Matters Hearing Board, which hears more than 100 pet nuisance cases a year -- far more than years ago, county staff members say.
One recent case implicated two geese in crimes against a next-door neighbor -- namely, pooping on the patio.
"They would come on my side of the property and go to the bathroom all over the place," witness James S. Jett of North Laurel soberly told the board.
"They were hanging out at your house?" board member Douglas Caldwell inquired.
Later, Jett, whose neighbor lives in a condominium, had this exchange with Caldwell: "She also had two ducks that would come over."
"Ducks?"
"Yes. Two ducks."
"In a condominium?" Caldwell seems intrigued, but he stays focused. "But pretty much the geese are the ones that are driving you crazy?"
The owner of the geese, Lisa Olsen, never acknowledged wrongdoing, but the board ordered her last month to pay a $25 fine with an official-sounding finding of fact:
"On various dates in June 1998 two (2) geese owned by Lisa Olsen did come onto the property of James Jett and did defecate and destroy flowers and plants," the order said. Olsen could not be reached for comment.
Often, these domestic disputes are resolved before the board hears them. The geese in question, for example, flew away.
But many disputes linger long after fines are paid, showing they sometimes are less about the pets than about the behavior of their owners. Those hauled before the board as defendants commonly return as complainants, retaliating against neighbors with pet peeves of their own.
"We get a lot of cases where it seems to be neighborhood disputes rather than animal problems, or perhaps neighbors have grudges against each other," said Gagnon, a dog owner and president of Animal Advocates of Howard County. Gagnon complains that such minor cases waste time but, as she well knows, the pet owners take the cases seriously.
Some other Maryland counties deal similarly with pet nuisance complaints. In Baltimore County, which has an Animal Hearing Board, owners of dogs that bark excessively also face $25 fines.
Repeat offenders in some counties can be fined $100 or more -- and when it comes to barking, pooping and gallivanting without a leash, animal recidivism can be high.
Tom and Jan DuBusky, for instance, are scheduled to return to "doggie court" this month to answer for their barking dogs. They first went before the animal matters board in July and were ordered to pay two $25 fines for two complaints about their four dogs' allegedly incessant nighttime yapping. Though the barking has died down since then, the underlying problem -- that the neighbors don't like each other -- only worsened after the July hearing.
Like a bad horror movie with sequels that just won't stop, the barking returns, neighbors say. In October, the DuBusky couple went away for a week, leaving the Yorkshire terriers behind, said neighbor Brian Montgomery.
"It was a week from hell," said Montgomery, 32, who testified on behalf of other complaining neighbors at the July hearing. "It was unbelievable that I had to stay home from work one day and sleep all day."
Montgomery has filed a new complaint about the week the barking wouldn't stop. Tom and Jan DuBusky have appealed, so the neighbors will head back to the Animal Matters Hearing Board.
The DuBuskys could not be reached for comment about the latest complaint, but in July they told the hearing board that they need to let their dogs out at night to relieve themselves.
"We don't feel that our dog should defecate in the house at nighttime," Tom DuBusky said. "We're here to ask your guidance."
DuBusky said in an interview after the hearing that it was too easy for people to file charges against their neighbors.
"It's not fair," he said.
The dog owners and their neighbors in this corner of the Hunt Country Estates community don't speak to one another.
"I can't approach them one on one," Montgomery said. "So my only alternative is to approach them through the doggie court."
Pub Date: 12/08/98