Your help is needed to show the HRM dog businesses are important

In June of 2005 a former competitor of Janet Chernin's lodged a "query" with HRM about the legality of the in home doggy day care that Janet was running in her home in Peninsular Halifax. For the past 13 years Janet had successfully - and without complaint from any of her neighbours or clients - been operating the Canine Casbah, the HRM's most successful and best run in home doggy day care in the HRM.

In the local dog community Janet is a local living legend. If you've ever met Janet - you've never forgotten her. She has the vocal cords of low-rider car's stereo and the heart of a lion. But because her former competitor had a personal beef with her - and wanted to make Janet's life a living hell if it was at all possible - she started a 4 year process that has brought us to an evening on April 21st, 2009 that needs to have as many dog lovers go to City Hall as possible.

Do you want to know all City Council meetings, public hearings that we've already had to go through to get to this stage in order to legalize this type of in-home occupation? Can you imagine the amount of Municipal money that has been wasted so far? Let's see - there's already been a public information session where the public went to, a Peninsula Community Council meeting that we went to that the process was given the go ahead to, a Planning Advisory Committee Meeting (Heritage Committee) that the process was given a go-ahead to, ANOTHER Community Council meeting that the process was given the go-ahead to (the first one was District 12, this one was District 14) - next was the first Public hearing at a Peninsula Community Council to get the public's input (for the 2nd time)....Next was a Regional Council meeting where the Peninsula Councillors reported the Planning Departments report - and Regional Council approved Peninsula Councils request to move forward to approve Janet's request to have her in home doggy day care.

So you think that would be ENOUGH to legalize a business, don't you think? Oh NO - according to the HRM's planning department - you're only about 1/3 of the way through their process. Really. So that was last January - 2008. In May ANOTHER public information meeting was held at City Hall. The FIRST ONE was held back in October 2006 - that's how long this foolishness has been going on for Janet!

Then in February 2009 Planning submitted a report to the Planning Advisory Committee who TURNED DOWN Janet's request to operate an in home doggy day care. But luckily that committee is meaningless and everyone on that committee is nothing but a blow-hard and full of shit - and the Peninsula Community Council are the only ones who make any kind of decisions who mean anything - so they didn't have to accept the recommendation that the PAC made - and on March 9th 2009 - the Peninsular Community Council - District 12 - recommended to initiate a process to amend the Halifax Municipal Planning Stragegy and Land Use by law to consider pet care facilities in residential zones through a development agreements. Yea!

And then on March 24th - PCC reported to Regional Council AGAIN - and they approved PCC's request to initiate Janet's request - which leads us to April 21st when we are all needed at Halifax City Hall when there is going to be ANOTHER Public Hearing to get the public's input on how important in home doggy day cares are to dog owners who live on the peninsula in Halifax.

Janet has set up an event on Facebook that you can go sign up on at http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=77980145836

We need as many people as possible to show up to show the City that dog businesses - and in home doggy day cares are important to dog owners - in home doggy day cares are different from institutional doggy day cares. We want in home doggy day cares because they are cage free, they are in the same neighbourhoods that we live in, they have a smaller ratio of dogs to humans, they are in the homes of the people who run the day care, the dogs are less traumatized, pick up and drop off times are usually less strict, they almost always do overnighters, there's a myriad of differences between institutional and in home doggy day cares - and there is a need for them on the peninsula.

If you want to read the history of Janet's fight - click on this link to go to all the posts about doggy day cares to read all about it - all the way back to the first public meeting in 2006. It's long and tawdry....