Late chihuahuas

You may recall a couple of posts here and at Mrs D's place about our neighbor's chihuahua quartet leaving their property, chasing one of our cats off of ours, and in general making a nuisance of themselves. The upshot of that event is that one of the chihuahuas was impounded by Animal Control, a second was hit and killed by a car on Avondale Drive, and the other two made it home safely.

Yesterday morning, for perhaps the 50th?, 100th? time in the past year, the two surviving chihuahuas and their pit bull mix mate engaged in a 90 - 120 minute barking session. The only thing that happened differently was that a call to DPD actually resulted in a citation for violating the Durham City noise ordinance. (Thank you Sgt. Dale Gunter).

Here's some emails that circulated on our neighborhood list the last two days.

I just went to take my dogs outside, and we had three dogs on our porch. Two chihuahuas (one tan, one black) and a large black dog. They headed east toward XXXXXXXX.

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My sister and I were driving around 5:30 this evening, turning onto Knox from Roxboro St. and saw a large black dog, a small black dog and a small tan dog crossing Roxboro, unfortunately the small tan one did not make it across, the other 2 went running down Knox. My sister got out of the car and removed the tan dog from the street but he was dead.

I can not imagine anyone in their right mind letting dogs run loose near such a busy street but if anyone on the list serve knows the owners please inform him/her theat the tan dog - a little larger than a chihuahua is dead and to please confine the other 2 lest they end up the same!

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Those dogs belong to people that live at XXXX Avondale. They get out constantly and we have called animal control several times because the big black intact male pit mix is pretty aggressive (he growls at people unprovoked). Unfortunately, the people really don't seem to care about those dogs because that is the second of 3 chihuahuas to die from being hit by a car.

Is it possible to develop an ordinance which requires people who are serial dog abusers or neglecters to take a class in responsible ownership before another license is issued to them for owning a dog? The larger of the dogs in question here is an aggressive animal who may or may not have his vaccinations. He should not be running loose. Previous dogs residing at this address have also spent most of their lives wandering through our neighborhood and adjacent neighborhoods. It's time for the county to figure out a way to deal with this issue.