It had been going on for years, but Janet Marsden said people in Oakland only got sick of it when pets started dying.

This year that’s been a problem, she said &045; a result of large dogs roaming freely throughout the town.

A dead dog and dead cats &045; sometimes left in people’s yards &045; as well as injured dogs and encounters with snarling aggressive hounds have left many residents afraid to walk outside, she said. Last summer a dog even attacked a child. Dog droppings deposited throughout town have also sparked consternation.

Her main concern is that dogs might attack more children, like the ones that play in the unfenced playground next to her daycare center. It lies within a hundred yards of three houses whose occupants, she said, chronically let their dogs loose.

One kindergartner who attends her daycare won’t get off the school bus if she sees a dog around because she was knocked off her bike once by a loose dog. Marsden said she once had to separate herself and children from a loose growling dog by placing a bicycle between her and the animal.

She said requests by residents for people to lock up their dogs have been ignored. Thursday, she and other Oakland residents will discuss a possible ordinance that they want passed by the Freeborn County Board. It would make it a misdemeanor to allow a dog to run freely throughout the town, and would require destruction of dogs that attack people or other animals.

So far, she said, 34 of the 36 residents of voting age in the town have signed a petition in support of the ordinance.

Freeborn County Attorney Craig Nelson said this isn’t the first time someone has asked the county to pass a dog ordinance. There is a state law which allows for the extermination of a dog that bites a person. State law also has the teeth to lock up aggressive dogs that chase or confront people, and attack domestic animals.

But Nelson said that people often get exasperated with the long process state law requires, and want a simpler, more strict law to take care of the problem.

In civil law, dog owners are responsible for the damage done by their pets, he said, but many people don’t want the trouble of going to court. They’re intimidated by the offending dog owner, don’t want the inconvenience or don’t want to be in the bad graces of their neighbor. They often just want the law enforcement to take care of the problem.

Several Oakland residents pointed to Maria Zapate’s house when discussing the problem. With four dogs, and at one time this year, 19 puppies, it draws a lot of criticism.

Her son, Jesus, said his family’s dogs are friendly, as his Chow, Oso, wagged his tag and sniffed a reporter’s hand. He said that dogs in nearby houses are the problem. Only one his dogs, a Rottweiler, is potentially unsafe, he said, and it’s kept behind a chain-link fence. He speculates that a raccoon may have killed another dog recently. But he said he is 90 percent sure that his dogs killed the two dead cats he has found in his front yard.

Other dog owners criticized were not available for comment.