Athabasca County administration is standing by their decision to serve $100 tickets for noise violation to both Sammyís Pet Boarding and Second Chance Animal Rescue Society (SCARS) last month.
The tickets, reported on in the Jan. 2 issue of the Advocate, have reignited the local debate about kennels and their place in the community.
Speaking at last Tuesdayís county council meeting, Reeve David Yurdiga briefly addressed the issue.
ìWe were just following the rules and procedures of our bylaws, and we are enforcing whatever it states in the bylaws,î he said.
Later, county manager Gary Buchanan noted that noise complaints about the kennels have been made for a number of years.
ìThereís been a fair amount of effort on our side to somehow find a balance (in) a level of noise that is acceptable in running the operation, but not so that it crosses the line to inconvenience the neighbourhood,î said Buchanan.
He confirmed audio recordings were submitted to council as part of the evidence submitted in separate cases against SCARS and Sammyís Pet Boarding, and that these recordings factored in to determining whether to penalize the kennels for the alleged noise.
In addition to a telephone conversation he had with a neighbour of SCARS in which barking could be heard in the background, Buchanan described separate audio recordings submitted to council as ìloud barking that continued for the length of time that the audio was played.î
Sammyís Pet Boarding, which is owned and operated by Vicki and Chris Stafford, is surrounded by hundreds of acres of farmland. Two neighbours of the facility have been in dispute with the Staffordís since early last year over the alleged noise their dogs make.
The complainants have declined to comment on the issue.
The Staffords have made efforts to soundproof their facility, including moving their operation to the rear of the facility, meaning the dogs are at least 500 feet from the road at all times, and two kilometres from the highway to the west.
Chris Staffordís mother lives half a kilometre east of the kennel and calls the accusations against her son and daughter-in-law ìridiculousî; the next closest neighbours apart from the complainants are slightly under two kilometres to the west. There, a man claiming to have lived there since 1962 said he has never heard dogs barking from Sammyís Pet Boarding.
Carol Williamson, a neighbour of SCARS said, ìPeople really do need to believe that these people (local kennels) are doing the best they can.î
Discussion on the issue has been ongoing in local forums, especially on Facebook. Nearly 100 comments on the topic were posted in an Athabasca group within 48 hours. Some who left comments questioned why farmers with noisy cattle are not ticketed, while others wondered if barking is a natural phenomenon of a dog kennel that should be tolerated. A vast number of those who commented expressed disappointment with the issuing of the tickets, while others sought explanation from those concerned with the allegedly excessive barking and howling. Some even offered to pay the kennelís fine.
