HEARTWOOD COHOUSING - FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS
Frequently Asked Questions
What about pets?
Living in the country, we have all manner of pets and farm animals: dogs, cats, bunnies, riding horses, draft horses, donkeys, llamas, etc. All of the animals are privately owned. All animal owners are responsible for making sure that their animals don’t adversely impact their neighbors. This requires plenty of give and take on the part of both the animal owners and the non-animal owners in the form of respect for non-animal owners’ right to quiet enjoyment of their home and neighborhood and tolerance for the animals. We also strive to ensure that our animals don’t harass the wildlife.
Some owners keep their dogs and cats under pretty close control and other owners let them roam free, so long as they are well behaved. Probably our greatest challenge with animals was a couple of years ago when we had a lot of not so well behaved free roaming puppies all at the same time. We have since worked that out and the puppies have grown up and are now better behaved.
An example of a creative solution that we were able to develop is our system of poop patrol. Rather than each dog owner being responsible for their dog’s poop (which would be nearly impossible with free roaming dogs), each dog owner is responsible for a certain area within the cluster to “patrol” to keep the area poop-free. If a non-dog owner does, however, finds dog poop in their yard, they just call the dog owner responsible for patrolling their yard to get it cleaned up. This kind of system allows us to have free roaming dogs and is really only possible because of the high level of communications and cooperation that is part of our community culture.
See our Agriculture and Pet Ownership agreement and our Pet Culture document for more details.
See the bottom of the Demographics page to see our current animal population.
