Charges against a Durango man who went to jail four times over a loose-dog ticket were dropped this week.
Despite the favorable outcome, Joshua Breunig said he doesn’t feel like a winner. He spent nearly $1,300 bailing himself out of jail on warrants issued for his failure to appear in court on multiple occasions.
The 32-year-old Army veteran maintained his innocence and vowed to take the case to trial. But more than that, he laments the idea that a dog-at-large ticket can be the impetus for sending someone to jail.
“People’s lives are just as busy as at the courts,” he said. “This type of thing, I think, should go through an administrative process.”
The incident occurred March 30, 2015, when someone reported a dark-brown pit bull running loose in the Durango West I subdivision. The dog apparently chased a 13-year-old boy and growled at his friend, according to an incident report filed in La Plata County Court.
La Plata County Animal Control found the dog, Buddy, sitting in Breunig’s driveway.
Buddy appeared skittish at first, but Animal Protection Officer Gary Skiba was able to coax him into custody. Skiba called Breunig to inform him of the situation.
Breunig asked Skiba if he could simply return the dog to the fenced yard, but the officer declined to do so. Instead, the officer took Buddy to the animal shelter and issued Breunig a citation.
Then began a series of missed court dates that Breunig characterized as honest misunderstandings or failures on the court’s part to effectively communicate its changing schedule.
He was scheduled to go to trial sometime this month.
But he reached a plea agreement Wednesday with the 6th Judicial District Attorney’s Office in which he will plead guilty to a separate citation for driving on a suspended license, and, in exchange, prosecutors will drop the dog-at-large citation.
As for Buddy, he’s been staying in the yard, Breunig said.
“Buddy is great,” he said. “He’s been making friends. I’ve been taking him on hikes every weekend and getting him out.”
Breunig is not entirely done with the court system. He picked up a new charge for resisting arrest as a result of a run-in with law enforcement on Missionary Ridge. He plans to fight the charge – but that’s another story.
“They wanted me to plead guilty to obstructing justice,” he said, “and I’m saying nothing they were doing was justice or justified.”
shane@durangoherald.com
Joshua Breunig court docs (PDF)
