Cityview
By Brenda Fullick
10/12/2006

Logan's Law
What if someone shot your dog?

What if you found out that your pet had been gunned down for sport with a spotlight and a high-powered rifle?

And what if you found out that, in the state of Iowa, it was perfectly legal?

Darcy Emehiser wants to change the state law that says anyone has a right to kill any dog not wearing a collar with a rabies tag in rural Iowa.

The current law was adopted at a time when rabid animals were a significant threat to Iowa's early residents. The law states, "It shall be lawful for any person and the duty of all peace officers. ... to kill any dog for which a rabies vaccination is required, when the dog is not wearing a collar with rabies vaccination tag attached."

The law also states that even if a dog is wearing proof of rabies vaccination, that dog may be killed on the spot when it is "worrying, chasing, maiming or killing any domestic animal or fowl. ..."

Worrying? Should a dog be killed because it makes another animal "worry"?

Emehiser isn't impractical; she believes that farmers deserve the right to kill feral animals when necessary to protect their livestock, and she believes that all people should have the right to protect themselves from dangerous dogs.

However, Emehiser - who operates an exercise park for dogs and their humans about five minutes east of Des Moines - doesn't think it ought to be legal for Iowans to kill other people's animals for the sheer joy of watching them die.

Lost in the fog

Emehiser's nightmare started on a Tuesday.

It was Dec. 27, 2005. Area fog hung so thick, a woman was killed in the Lowe's parking lot in Altoona because a driver couldn't see her.

Emehiser had been walking back to her house that day after a training session with her four dogs: Sage, Jasmine, Logan and Timber. Suddenly, three of the dogs took off, maybe chasing a rabbit or a squirrel; only the elderly Sage stayed behind.

Emehiser called to her dogs, and Timber returned to the house, but Logan and Jasmine didn't show. This was extremely unusual, because Emehiser is a professional dog trainer who makes sure her dogs have impeccable manners. "They had awesome recall - awesome recall," she says. Beyond that, the dogs had plenty of freedom to romp in the country at their home between Pleasant Hill and Runnells; they weren't like dogs who are cooped up in houses or yards and desperate for the chance to run.

Emehiser soon became convinced that Logan and Jasmine got turned around in the heavy fog and couldn't see to find their way home. Fortunately, she knew that Logan and Jasmine would be polite if they met up with humans: Both had their Canine Good Citizen certifications.
Logan in particular was a solid, levelheaded character: He was so calm, confident and patient that Emehiser had been using him during training to help re-socialize other dogs. "He was such a gentle spirit," Emehiser says.

Emehiser and her partner, Lin Nibblelink, launched an unusually exhaustive, exhausting search: They distributed thousands of flyers, bought two billboards on Iowa Highway 163, commissioned two aerial searches, sought tracking help from the Native American community, and arranged for a horseback search coordinated by the Animal Rescue League.

They also worked with animal communicators. And they bought newspaper advertisements that announced $1,000 rewards for each dog.

False sightings kept Emehiser's phone ringing - she racked up a $1,200 cell phone bill in just three weeks - and she followed up on a dizzying number of dead-end leads.

"We searched no less than 20 hours a day for the next 18 days," Emehiser says.

The searchers followed creek beds. When actual sightings were confirmed by people who knew Logan and Jasmine personally, the searchers would use urine and dog fur to try to leave a trail leading them back home.

But as far as anyone could tell, Jasmine and Logan kept moving, trying to find their way home. They just didn't know what direction home was.

At one point, they found Jasmine's leather collar. Her tags, including her rabies tag, had been removed.

Then, on day 16, they got a phone call: An elderly lady said there was a dog in a roadside ditch near her house. And, in fact, it was Jasmine's body. Apparently she bled to death from two gunshot wounds.

The elderly woman's son came by, Emehiser says, and he knew specific details about who had shot Jasmine.

But it wasn't technically a crime under Iowa law. Jasmine's collar had been removed, along with a bright orange harness designed to protect against accidents during hunting season.

The searchers kept looking for Logan. And two days later they found his body about 150 feet from where Jasmine had died.

He, too, had died, from a gunshot wound to the heart.

Logan's collar, tags and orange harness were also missing.

"They were shot with high-powered rifles and spotlights," Emehiser says. She says the elderly woman's son had a story that matched what animal communicators were telling her about what happened. We had some names, so we confronted some people."

However, the Jasper County Sheriff's Department wouldn't take a report, Emehiser says. After all, it's not illegal to shoot dogs in Iowa - even though the whole community was plastered with billboards, ads and flyers letting people know that these dogs were missing members of Emehiser's family.

"Then to have them just be shot when everybody - everybody - was aware we were looking for them," Emehiser says. "So we decided that the law needed to be changed."

A petition drive

This year just before funnel week, Emehiser and friends worked with Rep. Geri Huser, Animal Rescue League's Tom Colvin and the ARL lobbyist in an attempt to create support in the Legislature to change the law. But they started too late in the process, and certain vocal legislators were against them. Emehiser recalls Rep. Danny Carroll of Grinnell in particular as saying, "I don't want anybody to take away my right to shoot a dog."

Emehiser doesn't want people to lose that right, either. However, she believes most well-intentioned farmers would shoot warning shots into the air if a dog were really bothering their livestock; what she's trying to stop are the people who shoot dogs for amusement or spite. Emehiser says she's not anti-gun, but that her father taught her that you eat what you kill: "You don't just shoot to kill for fun."

Emehiser says she has cried every morning and every night since she lost Logan and Jasmine. "This loss has been harder than losing my mother."

It's illegal for private citizens to shoot guns in Des Moines and many other cities.

However, ARL director Colvin says that rural Iowa is divided between the people who care about animals' welfare and the people who follow the policy of the "three S's" - shoot, shovel and shut up. "That means you do it, and you don't tell anybody about it, and nobody's going to know," Colvin says.

ARL frequently gets calls from people whose dogs have run off their properties, Colvin says. "Before they could even get them back, they've been shot by a neighbor or whatever. And the neighbor may or may not have livestock."

Iowa's current law was designed to protect farmers, he says. However, people who just don't like dogs "can hide behind the same law. That's the frustration."

In many instances, like in the case of Logan and Jasmine, there were no livestock around to be chased, or even "worried."

One hundred years ago, "worrying" had a different meaning, Colvin explains. It meant that an animal was surrounded by potential predators and so fearful that it could harm itself. He argues that the law needs to be updated to reflect the current meaning of the word.

He also thinks the law should no longer decree that it's the "duty of all peace officers" to kill untagged dogs. "I've talked to a lot of law enforcement people that, frankly, don't want to shoot dogs," Colvin says.

A couple of weeks ago, petitions began showing up in coffeehouses and grooming businesses, asking for Iowa citizens to support a change in the law. The petition also will be emailed to veterinary offices throughout the state. "I want thousands" of people to sign, Emehiser says. "I can't see why we can't have 20,000 or 30,000 names, if not more."

More information is available at www.roversranch.com .

Des Moines Register
Rekha Basu
1/22/2006

Seek justice in the killing of dogs

Two days after Christmas, two pet dogs got seperated from their owner in the woods around Runnells.

Last week, after a massive, nearly 'round-the-clock search, the dogs turned up, three days and about a quarter-mile apart, in a Washington Township cornfield.

They'd been shot with high-powered rifles for sport, their owners say, and left to bleed to death.

Jasmine, a 9-year-old malamute -german shepherd mix, and Logan, a 3 year-old malamute-husky mix, had been owned by Darcy, a professional dog trainer, since they were puppies. The pictures show beautiful dogs, whose owner, in happier times, dressed her pooch for the photo in a red bandanna and top hat.

Darcy owns Rover's Ranch, a dog park and training center between Pleasant Hill and Runnells.

Devestated isn't a strong enough word to describe how she feels. She's beside herself with sorrow and rage. Not only were the dogs her best friends, she says, but Logan actually helped her train other dogs.

Whoever shot them did it for fun, she says. She calls it poaching: "I don't want to slam all hunters but these guys are not hunters."

Both dogs had been wearing orange harnesses and metal-buckle collars with four tags apiece, including blinking ones. Jasmine's collar however, had come undone and was found seperately. Both pets also had microchips implanted for identification.

But in the end, none of the safeguards protected them. What's worse, as cases involving hunters often do, whether in gorilla territory in Africa or the deer-filled woods of Maine, the shootings have split the community into two camps.

In one camp are the hundreds of friends and neighbors who went out in search teams, posted fliers offering a $1000 reward for the dogs' safe return, and have cooked meals and sent flowers and sympathy cards to the owners. Jasmine and Logan were known in the neighborhood. They were used in demonstrations at local schools. Involved in the search were people from Polk County Animal Control and the director of the Animal Rescue League.

In the other camp are people defending the still unidentified shooters by lashing out at the two owners, who have appeared on local TV news and are offering a reward for information. Darcy estimated she's gotten hundreds of hateful letters and phone calls from people defending the killings and blaming her for letting the dogs out of her sight. She'd stopped in her house to use the bathroom when they took off in a fog and sleet.

The law says you can shoot a nuisance animal on your property if it's a threat to people or livestock, but Darcy says her dogs were no threat to anyone. Jasmine weighed about 100 pounds, and hobbled because of hip dysplasia. There were no farmers or livestock for miles around. And she says her dogs could hardly be mistaken for coyotes because they were three times the size.

Both before and since the shootings, the women have combed the area and spoken to witnesses. Some placed the dogs at various spots over the two and a half weeks they were missing, but didn't call animal control. Others reported seeing three trucks carrying hunters trespassing on private property at night, using spotlights.

As for authorities, Darcy says despite several reports to the Jasper County Sheriff's Department and 4,000 fliers people distributed in the area, officers did nothing. A record keeper at the sheriff's department pulled up the records of a couple calls from the women, but there's not even a report on file from the sheriff's deputy they spoke to.

Clearly, to some, the fate of a couple of pets is a low priority.

Those of us who have and love animals can't understand how anyone could be cavalier about deliberate cruelty to them - even though almost daily, there are stories of pet heroics toward humans.

Maybe when a price tag can be put on their value to humanity, we'll get tougher about protecting them.

Altoona Hearld-Index
By Kristin Danley-Greiner
1/18/2006

Search for missing pets ends sadly for dog owners

For several weeks, dog lovers Lin and Darcy, who own Rover's Ranch Dogpark & Training Center near Runnells, had been frantically seeking out their two Husky-mix dogs who got lost in the fog near their farm on Dec. 27. Unfortunately, their search ended this past week when they found their beloved pets shot to death in an open cornfield. The two women now have issued a reward in the quest for more information on the alleged hunters who killed their dogs.

The dogs, Jasmine and Logan, had been playing outside that foggy day in December with another one of the couple's dogs, and the third dog returned home when the owners called for them. But Jasmine and Logan did not.

When Lin and Darcy first discovered their dogs missing that Dec. 27, they combed the immediate neighborhood, then distributed 4,000 flyers about the dogs to people in the area that same day, including garbage truck drivers at the nearby landfill. They mounted flyers on big sheets of plywood painted blue that they posted along Highway 163.

The loyal dog owners persisted in their search for their dogs, backing off on combing the woods for a bit, but camping in a farmer's field where they had been spotted despite the freezing cold temperatures. They tromped through the nearby landfill, looking for their dearly loved dogs and arranged for arial shots to be taken to try and help pinpoint their location.

They even enlisted the help of the Animal Rescue League, which planned to hold a search on horseback in the nearby countryside where the dogs had been spotted, as well as Shirley Hull, an animal communicator, who relayed messages from Jasmine.

But in the end, their diligent and heart-wrenching efforts were not enough.

"We received a phone call in the afternoon from a woman who lived a few miles east and a mile north of the landfill who said her son had seen an animal by the railroad tracks on his way to work that morning," Darcy said. "We went there immediately and it was Jasmine. She was dead from two gunshot wounds. She must have laid their all day before dying, because her body wasn't even stiff and rigor sets in within an hour to two of death."

The loss dealt a blow to Darcy and Lin, who had received quite a few calls with sightings of the dogs roaming the area, trying to find their way home. But the two never reached the area of the sightings in time. Jasmine's collar was found and sightings with descriptions of wolves in people's yards had been made, but the women knew it was just their big and lovable canines.

They were my babies. They were my kids. They were very important to us," Darcy said. "We picked out Jasmine when she was three days old and kept going back to see her until she was old enough to come home, and she was nine. We got logan at six-and-a-half weeks and he's just a little over three now. We just wanted them home."

The two women had proof that the dogs were north of their home near Ivy Church and followed Mud Creek almost to Bondurant. They also were spotted near NE 23rd Avenue, NE 54th and along the Camp Creek watershed. Unfortunately, after being on the run for a period of time, the dogs were hungry, scared and in survival mode.

"We'd done all of the other normal things and more. We had scent lures in strategic places, contacted all the police, sheriff, animal control, shelters, mail carriers, garbage trucks, delivery drivers - anyone who would take a flyer," Lin said. "We'd been working with people from the White Eagle Pow Wow who have held special Native American spiritual ceremonies, too. Dan Backer, a friend from Runnells, put in about as many brutal hours searching as we did, and The Pooper Scooper People were also tireless helpers."

Logan was found Saturday less than half a mile from where Jasmine had been found. Darcy said that the people who tipped them off to where Jasmine had been spotted said they believed the dogs had been killed by coyote hunters out spotlighting after dark without permission on private land.

"I used to hunt myself and have nothing against hunting, but there's a world of difference between a responsible, sportsman-like hunter and someone who runs down two domestic pet dogs - one who is 9 years old with a limp - across three miles of straight, flat cornfields," Darcy said. "There was nowhere for them to take cover from these people and no place to hide."

With Jasmine's coloring, Darcy said that it could be possible to mistake her for a coyote, but her size is much bigger than that of a coyote. Logan, however, did not resemble a coyote at all.

"In the end, we knew they were together, but these people were just shooting to kill and didn't care what it was," Darcy said. "Good thing there wasn't a child lost in the field at that time. But now we've lost half of our family."

For more information about the identification of the alleged hunters believed to have shot and killed Jasmine and Logan, call 967-6768. A reward is being offered for information that results in the identification of the people.

The Des Moines Register

Jasmine and Sage, malamute-mixed breeds, romped nearby while their owners spent months clearing overgrown vegetation and junk from their property so more dogs could play there.

Darcy and Lin, Jasmine and Sage's owners, today open Rover's Ranch Dog Park, a private park for dogs and their human companions. The two transformed farmland they bought two years ago north of Runnells to create the park.

The metro area's first dog park includes open and shady areas for small and large dogs to exercise, play and train without leashes.

Darcy, a member of the Association of Pet Dog Trainers, said the park will offer opportunities for education and training.

"We are promoting responsible dog ownership," she said.

The Rover's Ranch e-mail list of potential members includes about 400 names of people living as far away as Clive, Urbandale and West Des Moines. Manyof them learned about the park from early TV and newspaper coverage.

"We're opening, ready or not, and we'll keep working to get things in order," Darcy said.

They have erected a fence around a two-acre area, spread wood chips on walks, planted trees and flowers and designed an area for resting and smoking.

They expect to open an agility-training area next spring and create a pond where dogs can swim and train.

The owners plan this fall to enclose and insulate a nearby triple garage-size wooden shed for an office and classrooms.

Paula Sunday, the Animal Rescue League's pet behavior counselor, has agreed to offer classes, although none have been scheduled.

"I do want to work with them on some presentations, offering information for pet owners to learn more about dog communication and working with their dogs," Sunday said.

The park has a user fee, which ranges from $3 for one day to $150 for one year. Users must clean up after their dogs.

Rick Gates, a retrired Des Moines police officer who has two German shorthairs, Breeze and Putzer, purchased a charter membership for $500 after touring the area with his dogs.

"My dogs just love it out there," he said. "I think it's a beautiful, beautiful place."

Gates said he needed room to work with Breeze and Putzer, who hunt with him.

"Someplace like this was really needed for people to go with their dogs," he said.

Gates lives in northwest Des Moines and said it takes him 20 minutes to get to the park.

Darcy is the on-site manager. She plans to return to her work as an artist - she sketches portraits of pets - when work on the park is complete.

Lin, a mental health administrator for the Iowa Department of Human Services, works evenings and weekends on the park.

They are financing the project themselves and doing most of the work on their own.

"Nobody's believed in us to finance it. We're bootstrapping it," Darcy said. "It's definitely a labor of love."

Up Front
8/14/2002

Run free

Residents are still waiting for a public dog park to open in Des Moines. Until one is established, locals can try Rover's Ranch, which will open Aug. 17 at 200 S.E. 108th St. between Pleasant Hill and Runnells. The private park, which allows dogs to run off-leash, sells a $3 one-day pass, as well as monthly and yearly memberships. It's open seven days a week.

The Des Moines Register
Metro Record
By Register News Services
06/21/2002

RUNNELLS
Planned dog park takes a step forward

Runnells could be home to the Des Moines area's first dog park.

The Polk County Board of Adjustment has given Darcy and Lin approval to open a private animal-training facility on their property at 200 S.E. 108th St. They plan to open the park within the next six weeks.

The 2-acre facility will be slightly different than what is proposed in Des Moines and West Des Moines, Darcy said Wednesday. The park, about 2-1/2 miles east of Southeast Polk High School, will offer classes for obedience training and grooming. Memberships range from $3 a day to $150 a year. More than 130 people already have purchased memberships.

*CORRECTIONS: Rover's Ranch will NOT do grooming or offer classes on grooming. We are talking with our favorite groomer about presenting one of our monthly workshops on things every dog-guardian needs to know about grooming! The other incorrect detail in the article was about memberships. We do not already have 130 members, though at the time of the article about 130 people had indicated an interest so far. On Sept. 15, 2002 the $3 day pass is being replaced with a one time 1st-Visit pass for $5.

Rover's Ranch was on the 5:00 and 10:00 news on KCCI Channel 8 in August 2002!