Lance Mannion: Happiness is one ugly dog over than the legal limit

You need this law because if you let someone have more than two dogs, next thing you know they're going to have a hundred and fifty cats. Jeez. As one resident says, "C'mon, we're in the country. You can have 50 cows but you can't have three dogs?"

Sullivan pet owner snared by law for having too many pooches

NORTH BRANCH — She's 11 inches long from her moist button nose to her tiny twist tail.
She weighs 16 pounds — a tad more when she holds her favorite toy, a "Mickey" doll, in her wrinkled mouth.
Her name is Ruby. She's a French bulldog. She's breaking the law.
Here in this no-stoplight hamlet nestled in the mountains of western Sullivan County, the law says you can only have two dogs in a "settlement or business district."
Ruby's owner, Victoria Lesser, has two other dogs, Baxter, a pug, and Roxie, a Great Dane, who live with her in her Old North Branch Inn, putting her one pooch over the limit.
The sage-colored inn, which rents rooms, serves fare ranging from organic coffee to chili and has two immaculately restored set-your-own pins bowling lanes, looks like the only business on its street of neat homes. There is, however, a post office across the street. Mel's Garage and the volunteer firehouse sit around the corner. It's safe to say that North Branch — in the Town of Callicoon — has more animals than people (estimated population, 300).
No matter. The pet law — which also forbids howling, roaming and property destruction — has sharper teeth than Ruby. An owner can face fines of up to $300 for a third offense, or up to 15 days in jail.
It was passed eight years ago, after complaints in the same hamlet about one resident with 150 dogs and cats and another with 17 dogs.