By MELISSA N. WARREN / Review Appeal Staff Reporter

The caregivers of the Siliski Maltese dogs must return their foster dogs to the Williamson County Animal Control (WCAC) facility as soon as possible, according to a judge’s order from Monday’s motion hearing.
“Right now, we’re asking for them to be brought back ASAP,” District Attorney General Ron Davis said after the hearing. “I don’t know how long that will take because there are a lot of logistics that need to be worked out.”
But five days later, the scope of that process seems to be much larger than was first thought.
“It’s complicated,” a WCAC official said. “When we took the animals out of her home on Jan. 22, we took notes on every single one, and so did the DA’s office. We mapped out the areas where we got the dogs from, and all those dogs were listed in records according to the area where we found them.”
Six of the dogs were out of cages and running free throughout the house, records show. Siliski claims those six are the same “family dogs” that were ordered by Judge Lee Davies to be returned. Apparently, though, one dog taken from the open house area was not one of those “family dogs,” but instead, was a dog Siliski was boarding for another owner.
“When she came in to pick up the house dogs this week, I took all the dogs we had listed as house dogs out of the cages for her to see,” a worker said. “One of those wasn’t her house dog, so we gave that one back to the foster family.”
Three of the family dogs have been returned to Siliski, and the other three were set to be brought back to the facility by 5 p.m. Friday by the foster families.
Some 212 people were granted permission to foster the dogs at their own expense, an effort which has reportedly saved the county $50,000. While Animal Control does have records of every caregiver’s home address and phone number, it will take a certain amount of time to notify every person, officials said. Then will begin the painstaking process of matching up records from Animal Control and the DA’s office with Siliski’s records, as well as identifying all puppies born after Jan. 22.
“We alerted the DA’s office whenever the records changed, due to births or deaths,” a WCAC officer said. “We checked and double-checked ... there have been no mistakes.”
The entire identification process is to be held at the Animal Control facility or at the old Battle Ground Academy building, where the non-fostered Maltese are currently being housed. Only the six house dogs are allowed to return to Siliski’s home at 2235 Bowman Road.
A memorandum of law by the DA’s and county attorney’s offices states that at the conclusion of the May 24 hearing, the defense requested until the end of the week to work out the logistics of the dogs’ return.
Siliski’s lawyers did not object.
However, sometime after 7 p.m. Tuesday, Siliski’s lawyers sent the DA’s office a letter to “suggest that all the dogs should be at BGA by Wednesday at 1 p.m. for the identification procedures.”
According to the memorandum, the county attorney’s office replied to the defense, saying they have every intention of complying with the judge’s orders, but the hundreds of animals in question cannot reasonably be assembled so quickly.
Siliski’s attorney, Rebecca Byrd, did not return phone calls for a comment.

Staff Reporter Melissa N. Warren can be contacted at melissa@reviewappeal.com.

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