After almost two years of escapes, complaints, hearings, appeals and ever mounting financial cost to the town of Tisbury, town administrator John Bugbee dares to hope that the long saga of the chicken-killing Huskies belonging to the Garde family may finally end today.

Today in the Edgartown court, district court Judge Joseph Macey will consider Ken and Nina Garde’s latest appeal on behalf of one of their many dogs banned from the town. If things go the town’s way it will bring to five the number of Garde dogs which have been banned. And all for the same reason — multiple escapes from the family’s West Spring street property and the mauling and killing of poultry.

The emotional cost to the poultry owners has been considerable; some victims were pets. And the financial cost to the Gardes, in restitution various attempts to secure the dogs, also has been considerable. And then there is the cost to the town. Mr. Bugbee said it included $11,000 in bills from town counsel, as well as an estimated $4,000 of his own time.

He did not provide an estimate for the amount of time spent by Tisbury animal control officer Laurie Clements tracking, catching, holding and reporting on the Garde dogs.

The epic dog story began with Kenneth and Nina Garde’s dog Storm, who was the subject of multiple complaints involving escapes and raids on poultry flocks around Tisbury. First the selectmen placed a restraining order on the dog, then banned him from town, effective Sept. 1 last year. Storm then was moved to a temporary home in Oak Bluffs, from which he quickly escaped and killed 15 chickens, and also harassed other livestock. The Gardes eventually arranged for Storm to leave the Island. Laurie Clements said she understood Storm was sent to New York, “to some kind of rescue facility.”

But Storm’s bad habits had apparently been picked up by other Garde pets. Next to go was Mussa, who was found to have accompanied Storm on some of his raids. Last September the selectmen voted to ban her from the town as well. That problem was solved when Mussa’s owner, Rebecca Garde, moved off-Island. “Rebecca moved to Norwell. The dog supposedly was going there with her and then it was going to Vermont with her boyfriend, according to the testimony she gave,” recalled Ms. Clements. That left three dogs: Sundance, owned by Ken and Nina Garde, Sasha, owned by their son Daniel, and Kya, owned by their daughter Hannah. On Oct. 13, the selectmen decided to ban them from town, too, after hearing a repeat of the same old story.

On Sept. 15, Ms. Clements received a report of two huskies killing chickens at the home of Frederic and Anne Lucas on Lantern Lane. On arrival, she said, she found Sundance, Sasha and Kya attacking chickens. The birds, according to evidence offered by Mr. Lucas at the hearing, were their children’s pets. And Mr. Garde, who also attended, again made promises about better securing the dogs, this time with bars on the windows and an electric fence. He also said that his children, owners of two of the dogs, were planning to leave home soon, taking their pets with them. At various previous hearings Mr. Garde had offered various explanations for the escapes: gates left open by visitors, dogs slipping out while he was bringing in firewood, and once a claim that someone had deliberately and maliciously released the dogs.

At the Oct. 13 hearing, he said the dogs had broken through a screen, probably because they had seen turkeys outside. But by then, the selectmen had clearly run out of patience. They voted all the dogs out of town. The Garde family began a series of appeals against the decision. Mr. Bugbee summarized the series of actions:

“We had a hearing, the dogs were banned. [Mr. Garde] filed an appeal at the Edgartown district court, of the selectmen’s order. When the appeal was held, our attorneys made a motion that the appeal was past the deadline. The clerk magistrate agreed with the town. Mr. Garde appealed that decision to a judge, [who] also ruled it was too late.

“And he filed with the selectmen to reopen the hearing. They said no, due process had been followed. Then he filed another appeal, appealing the selectmen’s decision not to reopen the case. And that’s where we are at now, with a motion to stay proceedings pending a further decision of the town.”

Liza Williamson, the district court clerk-magistrate who dismissed the Garde’s original appeal on the technical grounds that it came outside the 10-day period allowed for filing, said today’s proceedings will relate to only one of the three dogs: Sundance. Asked if that meant the owners were in breach of the selectmen’s order to remove the other two dogs from the town, she said the town order to ban is valid.

Ms. Clements said as far as she knows, all the dogs are still at the Garde home. She said she felt confident of the outcome, and an end to her travails with the Gardes and their dogs. “Unless something new has come up,” she said, “the motion is moot.”

Mr. Bugbee was more cautious: “I thought it was over many times, and he keeps coming up with other avenues of appeal.”

Ms, Williamson said in Massachusetts, dogs are accorded the same due process as a human charged with murder, and the matter could be appealed all the way to the Supreme Judicial Court.

So the selectmen, town officials and Tisbury poultry owners should not, perhaps, count their chickens just yet.