One Lone Voice
How Olie Smith is Standing Tall in Lagrange, Indiana
The caller ID showed an Indiana area code, but the voice on the phone was pure Tennessee. The man who called me identified himself as Olie Smith. He was calling from Lagrange, Indiana, and was worried his local county commissioners were going to pass a new dog ordinance that might be detrimental to local dog breeders. He was convinced that his community leaders were trying to sneak something by him. Could I help?
Olie gave me phone numbers for the local animal control officer and the county attorney. My calls to both went unreturned. Olie suggested we attend the next county commission meeting together, and I agreed. I set out the morning of the meeting into a blizzard. The road and sky were all one curtain of white. The 55 miles to Lagrange were pretty terrifying, but by the time I got there, the sun had broken through.
For those unfamiliar with Lagrange, it is a town of about 3,000 people located just south of the Michigan border. It is the seat of Lagrange County, which has a population of about 35,000 and is home to Indiana’s largest Amish community. A look at the county’s visitor services website shows upcoming events that include Maple Syrup Days, the Topeka Spring Draft Horse Auction, and the Shipshewana Antique Specialty Auction. Thirty-seven percent of the county’s population is Amish, with almost 30 percent speaking some German dialect at home. In other words, it’s a rural county, made up largely of farms. I hate to stereotype, but Lagrange is not usually the sort of community where I expect to be dealing with unreasonable animal control laws.
I arrived at the meeting shortly after it had started. A young man I took to be the County Attorney, the same one who had never returned my calls, was droning on about another matter. A man I guessed to be Olie walked over to me and whispered a short introduction.
The room was full of spectators, and several attendees were forced to stand. I thought it was a bad sign that none of the commissioners made a move to provide more chairs. We stood through the whole meeting while the Commissioners avoided looking at Olie or me. I began to suspect Olie might just have been right to be concerned. As the Commissioners appeared to be winding up the meeting, Olie stepped forward and insisted he be allowed to speak. The Commissioners looked mildly annoyed when he asked if there was a new animal control ordinance somewhere in the pipeline. The Commissioners all shrugged and indicated they knew nothing about the details. The lawyer also offered vague reassurances that the new animal control person was working on something but there was nothing concrete so far.
As they all fiddled and fudged, I stepped forward and offered to assist with the drafting of the ordinance. No one seemed too excited at the offer of free help, but the Commissioners finally acquiesced and told me to contact the new animal control officer who, according to them, was drafting a new ordinance.
As Olie and I left the meeting, we stood in the hallway with another hunter and discussed the various and different stories we had been told by county officials. One official had told Olie the ordinance was complete and had been published in the local newspaper of record. Olie verified no animal control ordinance had been published anywhere in the county. The lawyer had suggested he was reviewing a document, but the Commissioners claimed no draft had been complete or submitted. As we stood there talking, a woman came up and briefly joined the conversation. She seemed disgusted by the idea of a county ordinance being drafted by the animal control officer. “You know what her job was before she went to work at the shelter?” she said. “A nail technician!” For you men reading this article, we’re not talking about hardware – a nail technician is someone who applies false fingernails to women in beauty shops.
The following week, I finally reached the animal control officer on the phone. Like the Commissioners, she was clearly unenthusiastic about an offer of help from the outside. However, she was willing to talk a little bit about her plans for the county shelter. First of all, she wants a no-kill shelter. No-kill shelters are quite popular in the animal rights community right now. However, the whole concept is a scam. By refusing to put down animals who are unadoptable because of age, illness or temperament, shelters fill up. Animal control officers can then point to their crowded shelter and request pay raises and budget increases and restrictions on dog breeding.
She also wants breeder licenses. Indiana already has a dog tax, and Lagrange dog breeders also must pay for kennel licenses. She insisted the breeder license would only be $30. Of course, breeder licenses are another favorite of the humaniacs. This concept has been adopted in Los Angeles where breeders must purchase a $100 dog license each year for each intact dog, and may only breed one litter per year if they have purchased a breeder license for $125. I told her the hunters and other dog breeders in the county would strongly object to breeder licensing. She seemed genuinely surprised. “It’s only $30,” she said.
In a last ditch effort to convince me of the rightness of her cause, the animal control officer launched into a complaint about “puppy mills.” I asked her what she meant, and she declined to be too specific. When I suggested she was taking a cheap shot at Amish farmers, an unwise political move in her county, she danced away from that. I pointed out to her that she could already close down any breeder who was neglecting or abusing dogs. She agreed, but insisted she needed breeder licensing to prevent “puppy mills.”
She promised to call me back after she talked to the County Commissioners. Of course, she has not done so. What is so disturbing about this particular case is that animal rights thinking is seeping into communities where you would least expect it. To hear animal rights “buzz words” in a rural Indiana county tells you how deeply the AR philosophy has filtered into our national psyche.
One man stands guard in Lagrange, Indiana looking out for the rights of dog breeders and owners. Olie Smith, who moved from Tennessee to Lagrange to please his wife, is watching his community leaders very, very closely. He is ready to stand up for his rights and the rights of all dog owners in the county. If you see Olie at a hunt, say “hello” and thank him. I just wish we had more like him in every community.
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