BELLE PLAINE, Iowa (KCRG) – A Benton County woman is trying to change a county ordinance after she says dogs came onto her property and killed several of her animals.
The woman shared graphic video with TV9 of what she says happened and why she thinks the current ordinance isn’t enough.
The fence around Kelley DeLong’s home was built not to keep her animals in, but to keep other animals out. Last fall, DeLong noticed something was killing her family’s ducks and chickens.
”What I had started to do was put Ring cameras up all throughout the yard to be able to catch what it is, so we can maybe prevent it from happening,” DeLong said.
Those cameras caught sight of two dogs in her yard that weren’t hers.
The next month, those cameras caught video of dogs killing one of the family’s pet cats.
The next month, another cat was killed.
Just last week, dogs killed a third cat while DeLong’s 13-year-old daughter was reading outside.
”Once she heard them attacking Biscuit, she just started screaming and running towards them,” DeLong said.
DeLong contacted the Benton County Sheriff about these dogs, believing them to be vicious and dangerous. But she says nothing has been done to stop the dogs from coming on her land.
“The current ordinance in Benton County is very vague. And it allows for so much ambiguity that the officers can, at their discretion, cite individuals within the ordinance,” DeLong said.
Tuesday, she spoke to the county Supervisors about changes to Ordinance 37. That’s the vicious animal ordinance in the county.
The current ordinance in Benton County does not label a dog as ‘vicious’ until it has attacked someone or another animal twice within a year. Nothing has to happen if an attack happens only once.
The code also lists specific breeds as dangerous before an attack even happens, like pit bulls.
Delong is asking the Benton County Board of Supervisors to change the current ordinance to be less about the breed of the dog and more about their behavior.
“We don’t need to allow vicious animals to remain in the community and allow small children, I have neighbors. I have neighbors that are little one year olds. That live right behind other neighbors. What if that’s accidentally seen as a small animal?” DeLong said at the Board of Supervisors meeting on Tuesday.
She is hoping the changes will be made to protect her pets, her kids, and others in her county.
“Our dogs are also not safe, our kids are also not safe, our cats are also not safe, so it’s just really upsetting that an ordinance protects the perpetrators and not the victim,” DeLong said. “My hope is that my daughter’s and my kids’ hearts are healed. That’ they’re able to go into the back yard and not be scared and afraid of our neighbor’s dogs coming on our property, and my hope is that every person in Benton County has the opportunity to feel that safety,”
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