Our old buddy Don dropped this one at the tipline:
Henry Carroll lives in Fayetteville, NC; home of Fort Bragg and the 82nd Airborne. He's in trouble with the guv'ment because he's looking after his son Adam's two dogs while Adam serves his country in Iraq. Why would looking after two dogs get Henry in trouble? Well it seems there is a county ordnance that says if you have five dogs you are running a kennel....and he has three dogs of his own. But it also seems that the ordnance isn't cut and dried as Henry has gotten two interpretations from two different county employees.
To try to solve the problem, Henry got the Army to write a letter to the county saying that the two dogs belonged to his son. The county's response: since Adam didn't sign the letter it might not be valid. That the letter is signed by Adam's platoon leader isn't enough for some people.
In the meantime, Henry says that if he is forced to give up any animals, he will give up two of his own. He's not going to break a promise to his son.
If the employees of Cumberland County don't have anything better to do than to harass a man taking care of his son's dogs, maybe we need to find them something to do. OR maybe we need to fix it so that they don't have to worry about this anymore. Can you say "You're fired!" boys and girls? I knew you could!
Wednesday, April 16, 2008
Too Many Dogs
2 comments:
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When I read the part about the local officials not trusting the word of the company commander, I thought about the classic movie Miracle on 34th Street, in which the lawyer for Macy's Santa persuades the Post Office to deliver letters addressed to "Santa Claus", allowing the judge to simply abide by the ruling of the US Government agency and declare that he is therefore St. Nick.
ReplyDeleteIf a letter from a competent officer of the US Army isn't good enough, then the Post Office Defense may no longer apply.
I also sent this to Bill Lumaye, a local talk show host on WPTF in Raleigh, NC. Bill said he was going to try and contact Henry to see if any of the dogs could be put in foster homes until this could be straightened out. He also said that he thought he could get Purina to donate food for the dogs.
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