Hanover dog owners must beware of stiffer fines for dogs who bark excessively or wander unattended since the town's board of selectmen voted to repeal lax local dog ordinances in favor of stricter state laws.
Some College fraternities have already started to respond to the stricter laws by taking measures to ensure their dogs do not stray from their property.
At a March 18 meeting the Hanover Board of Selectmen voted down the town's 1973 dog by-laws which fined owners of delinquent dogs $10 for each minor offense, Selectman Jack Nelson said.
Minor offenses include excessive barking, or roaming, scratching, defecating and spreading garbage on property other than the owners, according to the Valley News.
The town no longer has its own dog ordinance but yields to state statutes which carry fines of $25 for a dog's first minor offense and $50 for the second.
More serious offenses such as chasing bicycles or cars can draw fines of $50 for a first offense and $100 for a second. Owners of dogs guilty of physically attacking human beings or other animals can be fined as much as $200.
Nelson said the Board of Selectmen had no choice but to repeal its local ordinance.
"There's a more stringent state law in place that makes it so there's no need for local ordinances," Nelson said. A town cannot maintain dog laws that are more lax than state restrictions, he said.
He said the Board of Selectmen did not repeal the law in response to the town's recent problems with rabies, stray dogs and canine defecation.
Higher fines may elicit the most gripes among dog owners at Dartmouth.
"When it comes to dealing with dogs being unrestrained, probably 80 percent of the calls we go out on are related to student dogs," Hanover Police Captain Chris O'Conner said.
O'Conner said the Hanover Police Department deals particularly often with fraternity dogs.
Because some fraternities have many dogs, and the dogs are not attended to by any one person, they often go unwatched and cause problems, he said.
"We've been to court on three or four occasions where we've had to file abatements" for Dartmouth students' dogs, he said. An abatement can be a restraining order or a statement of no-confidence in the dog's owner.
"All we tell the court is that the dog is not vicious but that it's just in the wrong environment," O'Conner said. "It just has no one controlling it, so the dog doesn't know any better."
After the police file an abatement, the Court must decide whether or not to take the dog from its owner and give it to a humane society that will find a new home for it, O'Conner said.
To keep their new dog, Murphy, on house property and out of any trouble, the Sigma Alpha Epsilon fraternity installed an invisible fence last summer, according to SAE's dog handler, Matt Richards '97.
Whenever Murphy crosses the property line he gets a beep from a radio transmitter around his neck. Murphy then has a few seconds to get back home and avoid a mild electrical shock.
Sigma Phi Epsilon fraternity brother Michael Anderson '96 said the house recently installed an invisible fence similar to SAE's for its dog, Zeus.
Anderson said the fence "gives the dog a little more freedom" to roam fraternity property without allowing it to leave.
Some students think these laws are too severe.
Claudio Saavedra '96 said Hanover's dog laws "are much too strict."
"It's not that fun for the dogs nowadays," he said. With the new laws, he said, "I think that most people will restrain their dogs more, and I don't think that's good. Especially now that spring and summer have come."
Saavedra said dog laws in general are a "big hassle for dog owners. Dartmouth is like a big park. From time to time you want to free the dog from the leash."
