County seizes 30 dogs near Eureka

An assault complaint last week in Eureka led to the seizure by county authorities of nearly 30 dogs from a man barred by a court order from possessing them.

Fred Musil, 64, was arrested March 28 and charged with four counts of felony assault along with one count of misdemeanor assault following a right-of-way dispute with a neighbor. Musil is accused of engaging in a physical confrontation and then retrieving a gun and pointing it at four different people.

Musil also had about 30 large mixed breed dogs on his property, but he was barred from possessing any dogs by a 2004 court order from Lewis and Clark County, said Lt. Roby Bowe of the Lincoln County Sheriff's Office.

Musil was convicted in Lewis and Clark County of five misdemeanor counts of cruelty to animals along with one misdemeanor count of failure to license his dogs. According to court documents, Musil had more than 50 dogs in his possession at the time.

Most of the dogs at Musil's property in Eureka were confined to pens, but a number of complaints had been made to authorities regarding some of the dogs roaming free and harassing other animals, Bowe said.

The dogs were collected on Monday by county law enforcement and animal control officers. The roundup was completed without injury to people or animals, said county sanitarian

Ron Anderson.

Housing for the dogs is being split between the county's shelters in Libby and Eureka. The county is required to keep the dogs for at least 10 days to give the owner a chance to file an appeal. If an appeal is filed, the county might end up keeping the animals "for months" until the case is resolved, Bowe said.

Most of the dogs are unsocialized and unlikely to be candidates for adoption, Bowe said.

"For the time being, we have limited space to continue our normal operations," Anderson said. "But at some point it's going to become an issue for continued care of them."