Kennel owners win legal fight with forest

A federal judge has ruled there are circumstances when dogs can be defined as livestock, a decision that clears the way for a northern Idaho kennel business to continue operating on land where federal Wild and Scenic River rules apply. The ruling by U.S. District Judge Edward Lodge is a victory for Ron and Mary Park, owners of Wild River Kennels, and a legal blow to the U.S. Forest Service. It also ends, for now, a 10-year-old legal dispute for the kennel, which is built along the Clearwater River near Kooskia. The kennel property is along private land subject to an easement under the federal Wild and Scenic Rivers Act. While the easement allows for livestock farming, the forest service claimed dogs and commercial kennels didn't qualify and that the business should not be allowed to operate. Lodge initially agreed with the government, and in 2005 issued a ruling that concluded that dogs, even under broad definitions, could not be deemed livestock. The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals concluded Lodge got it wrong and sent the case back. While the justices acknowledged the uncertainty of classifying dogs as livestock, they said wording in the easement defining livestock was too ambiguous. Lodge changed course in his latest ruling, filed recently in U.S. District Court in Coeur d'Alene, and attempts to set parameters when dogs fit the livestock designation. "Under the facts of this case, the court finds that the dogs being used on the easement property for breeding, hunting and boarding are dogs being used for work and/or profit and can be considered livestock under the plain meaning of the term livestock," Lodge wrote...read more