A woman’s request to let her keep a kennel next to her home was denied by Cherokee County on Aug. 15. Her attorney is now working with the county to let her have 60 days to find new homes for the animals.
The Cherokee Board of Commissioners voted to affirm a Zoning Board of Appeals decision that the kennel, operated by Lydia Moll for decades before county officials learned about it, cannot be grandfathered in as a nonconforming use in an R-80 zoning district.
Her attorney, Mike Bray, said the zoning limits Moll to eight adult animals. She now has 19 dogs and six cats on her property and will have to find homes for 17 of them.
Moll, 71, has maintained that she has bred, shown and sold dogs and cats out of her home, on South Cherokee Drive near Woodstock, since 1968 – one year before the county adopted a zoning ordinance that prohibits kennels in residential areas like hers. But Moll was unable to prove her business predated the zoning law.
Moll most recently specialized in breeding Yorkshire terriers and Maltese.
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