By Darragh Johnson
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, July 7, 2006; C01

In the case of the barking Pomeranians, tempers first flare while complainant Sidney Miller and defendant Donna Hamlett wait for the animal court judges to return with a verdict.

"Would you shut your mouth?" Miller suddenly hisses to Hamlett, his next-door neighbor. Miller's wife tugs urgently at his sleeve. Hamlett does not look at him.

The momentary lull causes two other parties to erupt in this room of neighbors sparring over cats and dogs, horses and peacocks.

"The dogs were not out of the yard," spits Francis Marceron, a man in boots and jeans with an embossed Western belt.

"Then who was the gentleman," begins Diana Barnes, a woman in a beige linen suit holding tight to her granddaughter's hand, "who put the dog --"

"We don't know what you're talking about, ma'am," Marceron interrupts.

"Ohhh," Barnes answers, snide and sarcastic. "Ohh-kay."

Things quiet down, briefly, when the judges return with a decision: Hamlett's dogs are guilty on all four counts, but the fines she must pay are reduced in half, to $100. She stands to leave and growls she'll pay no such thing, which sends Miller -- who just testified his court appearance cost him wages of $200 -- chasing after her.

From the parking lot come shouts and high-pitched retorts. Everything in the room freezes. A uniformed animal control officer sprints out the doors and two police officers swiftly follow.

"SHE THINKS IT'S ABOUT . . ." Miller is screaming.

"HE HAS NO RIGHT," Hamlett counters.

"GET IN THE CAR!" Hamlett's husband barks at her.

"SEE WHAT WE PUT UP WITH?" Miller cries, turning to the police, who urge everyone, firmly: Leave it. Head home.

But home, for these neighbors, means two houses so close together that, as Miller testified, his bedroom window sits a mere eight feet from the Hamletts' back door.

Two houses where, Hamlett told the court, she and Miller's wife "have been friends for 30 years."

* * *

Recently, Anne Arundel County's animal control troops got a call about "chickens at large" tromping through a neighbor's flower beds, "and you can imagine the smell," said the woman who took the call.

Forget Judge Judy. Forget "The People's Court." Forget the entire overproduced genre of "reality TV."

The wackiest, most dramatic show in town happens the first Monday of the month, in a small white room in Millersville next door to the county pound. The floor is dark-green linoleum, the decor is three fake plants, and two video cameras record the proceedings for county government TV.

In summertime, the neighbor-to-neighbor acrimony amps up to such an extent that hearings occur about once every two weeks.

Here at animal control headquarters, a panel of seven commissioners presides deadpan over a docket that has involved everything from emus to ostriches to a runaway wallaby in the woods. Those deciding the fate of family pets include pros -- a veterinarian, a police officer and a county health officer -- and amateurs, four ordinary citizens appointed by the county executive.

The cases feature simmering rage and full-blown feuds.

They are not really about animals.

Lots of times, says Commissioner Paul Yates, the animal is just "the last straw."

"Lots of times," adds Commissioner Jeffrey Gauges, "the animal is a vehicle for the neighbors to finally have it out."

Take, for example, the bite case involving a 1-year-old cinnamon chow chow named Sebastian, whose family appeared in court recently alongside an elderly next-door neighbor. In a shaky and European-accented voice, the elderly woman, Nerina Evans, testifies that Sebastian bit her when she walked into her neighbors' house while they weren't home. Her story rushes out with all the focus of a terrier spooked by lightning, and the commissioners frequently implore her: "Please. Ma'am. Stick to the bite case."

At one point she mentions Sebastian's owners charging her with burglary -- "That's a different issue!" the neighbors interrupt. "The police department is involved in that one." At another point the woman mentions that the neighbors, Jennifer and Paul Michalec, are suing her.

"Wait a minute," Commissioner James Cifala asks. "They're suing you?"

"That's not true!" shout the Michalecs. "Not. True!"

And the case has barely begun. The rest of it includes an HIV-positive hairdressing brother from Philadelphia; conflicting testimony about an afternoon errand for cigarettes; and the tragedy of how this woman has lost her husband and how the people next door were there for her. And how she'd go over there for dinner. And how she lent them $8,000, or $10,000 -- she gave both numbers -- and how she reminded them of their dead Italian grandma. But the relationship has since fallen apart, and "this is destroying me because they are my family."

To which the neighbors respond: It's fallen apart because you're trying to get our dog killed by making false allegations to animal control.

"I haven't the slightest idea," Gauges finally declares, "what is going on."

Pleads Cifala: "Let's stick to the bite issue."

* * *

Next up:

Christy was a 14-year-old beagle who was partially eaten, authorities were told, by a stray pit bull. The stray escaped into the woods. Christy had to be euthanized.

Animal Control Officer Justin Scally took the investigation door-to-door in Christy's Glen Burnie neighborhood, asking everyone about this wildly dangerous stray pit bull. He put up fliers. Then he got a tip.

The pit bull wasn't a stray.

The pit bull lived with Christy. The pit bull attacked Christy inside the house. The pit bull belonged to the daughter of Christy's owner.

And now, in animal court, daughter Monica Schoolman is pleading on behalf of the pit bull, 3-year-old Destiny.

"Destiny," Schoolman tells the commissioners, rubbing her arms nervously and rocking in her chair, "she wouldn't harm a child!"

The commissioners are looking at photos of what Destiny did to the elderly beagle. One commissioner gasps audibly. The others look a little sick.

"She's not a dangerous dog. Honestly," Schoolman says. "She's never bit a human."

"What," Gauges finally asks, "caused the attack?"

Nothing, Schoolman tells them. The beagle was lying next to her while she worked at her computer. Destiny was locked behind a gate in a nearby bedroom. Schoolman got up to go to the bathroom, and Destiny launched over the gate and tore into Christy.

So, Gauges continues, "the beagle wasn't doing anything, right?"

"No," Schoolman says. "The beagle was sleeping in the recliner."

Schoolman's mother has not come to the hearing. Schoolman says she is living again with her mom because "I'm not working now. . . . Money's tight. A lot's going on in my life." She adds later, "My parents are going through a divorce."

"You're worked up, your legs are shaking, your arms are shaking, you're a nervous wreck," says commission Chairman Jerry Mochell. "I'd take a couple hours and sit down and really think about this. What would happen if . . . she attacked one of your parents?" But absent any protest from Schoolman's mother, the commissioners uphold Scally's order declaring Destiny "potentially dangerous" and requiring her to live inside a heavy-duty, fenced-in kennel or be crated inside a keyed, locked room. She is to be walked on a short leash with a muzzle at all times.

So her dog is spared! But as the verdict is read, Schoolman keeps rocking in her chair, picking at scabs on the back of her arms.

* * *

And now comes the case of the run-amok keeshonds, who stand accused of stalking a neighbor's old horse, terrifying schoolkids at the bus stop and tearing through the lavish outdoor weddings at Kurtz's Beach.

"The wedding coordinators call us and say, 'Please come over and chase the dogs!' " testifies Bonnie Kurtz, owner of the 73-year-old Chesapeake Bay-front idyll.

"Her dogs will circle you and bark and growl," testifies another neighbor from this small waterfront community. "The teeth showing is what bothered me."

"He could trip! Fall! Break a leg," testifies Susan Lechner on behalf of her horse, 37 and arthritic. "And [then] I'm going to have to put my horse down."

"I don't even walk to my mailbox without pepper spray," testifies Paul Streckfus. "I'm very concerned for the children, and I'm concerned about mayhem. I've heard neighbors saying they're going to shoot those dogs."

The dogs' nervous owner, Barbara Carrasco, has brought with her a rare accessory for animal court -- a lawyer. He injects legalese unusual for these proceedings: "We stipulate" and "I object." A friend of Carrasco's stands and howls, "This seems like a modern-day witch hunt!"

For two hours, the case goes on. In the end, animal court sides with the complaining neighbors. The keeshonds are guilty as charged and "potentially dangerous," and the commissioners fine the owner $250 and order her to confine the dogs to a kennel.

Happily, the neighbors file from the room. On her way out, Kurtz stops next to a man in the back and apologizes for how long their case took and how extraordinarily unnecessary it all seemed.

"Just wait till they get to mine," the man, Gary Palmer, answers cheerfully. "My neighbor says my cat killed his dog!"