Overseas GI’s dogs’ temporary home irks N.C. officials

County officials at Fayetteville, N.C., home of Fort Bragg, a major Army post where members of the 101st Airborne Division train, are making it difficult for the father of an overseas soldier to look after the GI’s two dogs, notes Grumpy Editor.

Officials say he is running a kennel.  But they are fuzzy with the definition of a kennel.

Grumpy Editor maintains that’s sort of strange, since Fort Bragg has been a military reservation since 1918, making it hard to imagine that in a 90-year span --- including World War I and World War II --- this is the first time officials' eyebrows were raised when a soldier left pets behind at a safekeeping location in the county.

Henry Carroll, with three dogs of his own, took in his son Adam’s two dogs when the soldier deployed to fight in Iraq.  Adam, with the 101st Airborne Division, is not scheduled to return home until December.

But the temporary lodging of two canines under one roof got county officials in a lather.  They said the senior Carroll has two dogs too many and claim he is running a kennel, for which he is not licensed.

So the older Carroll, 45, an Army veteran disabled by a heart condition, is taking the fight tonight to the Cumberland County Board of Adjustment which meets in the county courthouse at Fayetteville.

Carroll tells Fayetteville Observer writer Nancy McCleary that if he is forced to give up two dogs, they won’t be his son’s, adding he will honor Adam’s request to keep them.  “I have to hang onto his dogs until the end of his tour,” he declares.

Steve Sbraccia, reporter at WNCN-TV, an NBC outlet in Raleigh, N.C., reports the father says he received several different answers when he asked the county to clarify the definition of a kennel.

One official cited an ordinance that defines a kennel as any place where eight or more dogs or cats are fed, sheltered and watered.  However, a county document he received defines a kennel as any premises where four or more dogs are kept commercially or as pets.

Sbraccia says the older Carroll got the Army to write a letter explaining two of the dogs belonged to his son, but county officials didn't buy it because “since Adam didn't sign it, it really might not be valid because it was signed by his platoon leader.”

The “too many dogs” report was picked up by some other NBC stations, all the way to WCSH-TV, Portland, Maine.

Associated Press covered it in six sentences.