Settlement Reached In Animal Abduction Woman Sued Disgruntled Neighbor Who Discarded Her Dogs In Post Falls

Geri Foster moved into her dream home last July, joining a friendly upper-middle-class neighborhood a few blocks away from Mullan Road Elementary School.

The 48-year-old Foster helped design the one-story ranch house and served as general contractor during construction.

“It was going to be my place of peace,” she said. The house had a spacious garden and a sunlit kennel for the two dogs she called the joy of her life.

Instead of peace, Foster found distress and grief four weeks after moving into the neighborhood.

A neighbor, frustrated by the repeated barking of Foster’s dogs, found his own method of noise control.

As Foster drove to work on Aug. 22, neighbor Dean Marshall lured her two yellow labs out of their kennel and into his van. He drove them to Post Falls, removed their collars and let them go.

He drove home alone.

Foster had no idea what happened to her dogs for the next two weeks. None of her neighbors - including Marshall - offered any answers.

Twelve days after their disappearance, Marshall admitted to sheriff’s deputies that he took the dogs. He later pleaded guilty to one misdemeanor charge of taking and abandoning an animal and paid a $500 court fine.

It took Foster another five days to recover 1-year-old Maggie after learning the dog had been adopted from a North Idaho animal shelter by a Coeur d’Alene family.

She later found out that her older dog, Duchess, probably died in Post Falls after animal control officers failed to catch her.

Two weeks ago, Foster filed a civil lawsuit against Marshall, asking for $200,000 in damages. On Wednesday, attorneys settled for $2,030.

“This was never about money,” Foster said Thursday.

“I just wanted to use (the suit) to send a message, to make my neighbor see what happens to dogs that are abandoned and end up in animal shelters.”

Marshall refused to comment on the case.

In a letter of apology to Foster, he said he acted out of desperation. The dogs’ barking echoed off Foster’s garage, he wrote, causing his family sleepless nights.

“In my impulsiveness, I could only think of one thing. That was to put an end to the barking,” he wrote in the letter.

Another neighbor, Mike Talbot, said he heard Foster’s dogs bark only one full night. After she bought a collar that sent an electrical shock to one of the dogs each time it barked, there was no more noise, Talbot said.

Talbot said Marshall is “the only person in our entire neighborhood who doesn’t own a dog and maybe that was a factor in what happened.”

Foster admits her lawsuit was a way to force Marshall to reconsider what she calls a “vigilante” solution to a neighborhood problem.

Marshall must pay Foster $1,280 - the equivalent of working 160 hours in an animal shelter - plus $750 to partially compensate her for the time and money she spent looking for the dogs.

Foster said she drove about 900 miles in the weeks after the dogs were taken, searching area animal shelters for Duchess and Maggie. After Marshall admitted taking the dogs to Post Falls, Foster drove regularly to Idaho shelters - sometimes three times a day.

After recovering Maggie, Foster heard a Post Falls resident had seen Duchess walking weakly through her neighborhood.

“I really grieve for her,” Foster said. “She was a wonderful companion for 10 years. She deserved to die at home, not out alone.”

Foster originally offered to drop the suit if Marshall agreed to perform 160 hours of community service in an animal shelter. When he refused, Foster calculated how much 160 hours of labor at an animal shelter would cost.

Foster, operating room manager at Sacred Heart Medical Center, said she knows publicity about this dispute will cause Marshall and his family some embarrassment.

She said she’ll also endure some criticism from people who’ll look at what she’s done and call it frivolous and punitive.

“A lot of people will look at what I’ve done and say, ‘Oh, this is just about a dog. How big a problem can that really be?”’ Foster said.

“What is clear is that this problem was because of the large difference between two kinds of people.

“Those who consider their pets just as important as some people regard their children. And others who can’t understand that at all.”

Foster said she’ll donate the $1,280 to a Spokane area animal shelter.

, DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: Photo