Back in March, we brought you the story of a condo complex in Northern Virginia where dog-owning residents had been given 30 days to provide DNA samples of their canine companions. But the condo owners tell Consumerist that in spite of the condo association’s best attempts to ignore them, they aren’t about to take the DNA requirement lying down.

After the story was posted on Consumerist, the attention created a buzz among the condo residents, many of whom wanted to discuss the topic with management.

However, resident and Consumerist reader Dave tells us, “We thought getting national attention would make the board more willing to hear the arguments… Turns out it just made them go in to hiding and ignore everyone further.”

Dave says that when a rule change is about to come before the association, the board usually posts fliers to alert residents so their voices can be heard before a vote. But in the days leading up to the original vote on the dog DNA issue:

There was nothing about this DNA sampling of dogs anywhere, and was passed during a meeting with very few people in attendance.

Once everybody got wind of it, we started to take action. Some other concerned dog owners posted their own fliers to get the word out there. The fliers were ripped down by the office manager saying we can’t post those on the bulletin boards, and we can not meet about that. If we want to discuss it, we can do so at the board meeting. Funny…. Now we can’t talk to our neighbors?

Since they were not allowed to post bulletins in protest or to discuss the topic outside of a board meeting, the residents all made plans to attend the next get-together of the board, which also happened to be the last board meeting before the deadline to provide their dogs’ DNA samples.

That’s when the board decided to cancel the meeting, says Dave.

After residents expressed their displeasure at this cancellation, the board agreed to extend the DNA deadline until after the next board meeting. Hopefully, this will give Dave and his fellow dog-owners the chance to voice concerns like:

What happens if a vindictive neighbor pulls your dog’s poo from the trash and puts it out to get you in trouble? What happens if someone else leaves their dog’s mess out there and my dog marks his territory on the offending poop? Now my dog could be the one flagged and I get fined.

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