The morning of April 3 was much like any other when Indigo Cove resident Donna Post decided to walk Tessie, her 5 ½-year-old golden retriever, on the beach.
The pair crossed State Road A1A and proceeded over Indigo Cove’s residents-only access. And Post saw they weren’t alone.
“I was the only person on our beach that day,” Post says. “Two animal-control officers gave me a ticket. They were very apologetic, said this was the worst part of their job. They even petted Tessie! But they said they had to do this because they’d had complaints.”
Post says she was caught in a crackdown by the Brevard County Sheriff’s Office on people taking their dogs to areas of the beach where dogs aren’t allowed.
And that’s most of the county’s 72-mile-long beach. The only place where dogs are allowed is, in fact, a 700-foot section of Canova Beach Park near Indian Harbor Beach. “That place is overcrowded,” Post said last week. “And it’s well to the north of us.”
Post paid her $55 fine, court records show. But she also put out a warning of the crackdown to Facebook, through the Friends of Melbourne Beach group.
In the process she met fellow Melbourne Beach dog owners Lisa Herendeen and Charlotte Hertz. The trio are scheduled to go before the County Commission on Aug. 6, seeking dog access to a 14-mile stretch from Melbourne Beach south to the Sebastian Inlet.
That meeting starts at 5 p.m. in the commission chambers, Bldg. C of the County Government Complex, 2725 Judge Fran Jamieson Way, Viera.
“There are only eight county spots that are open to the public for that entire nearly 14-mile stretch,” Herendeen said. “Yet there are 32-plus private access points for residents to access the beach.”
Post said she would like to see dogs allowed on the beach from the various communities’ residents-only access points, rather than from a county park, since most of the dog owners hail from those communities.
She said she and the others launched a petition drive through the Internet site Change.org.
“And in 24 hours, we had 1,000 signatures,” she said, adding the count has reached more than 3,000 since April.
One person who isn’t impressed by the petition drive, however, is County Commissioner John Tobia.
The Grant-Valkaria resident’s District 3 includes the same stretch of beach the women want for increased dog access.
“Mostly I’m concerned about health and safety,” Tobia said. “It’s the feces. It’s the urine. There are many reasons why we only have certain areas where dogs are allowed.”
The women said they rarely, if ever, see any dog feces on the beach.
Hertz said the group would only want dog access before 9 a.m. and after 5 p.m., so as not to conflict with most beachgoers’ preferred hours for themselves.
Hertz said it’s not good to keep dogs on the beach through a Florida summer’s hot daytime hours. But working around human use, she said, her 3-year-old golden retriever, Misty, is able to keep cool.
But Tobia wasn’t convinced that different beach hours would be any better.
“They want to use the beach only in certain hours,” he said.
“But unfortunately, in those hours, the beach isn’t being monitored (by lifeguards). And if you can’t monitor it, you don’t know whether people are picking up after their dogs.”