dog laws....rest of the story...

[Gonfercoffee]

July 8, 2008

by Julie Hauserman


Saying hello to a dog in a shelter.

Even though Dallas boasted a brand new, multi-million dollar animal shelter, the reality behind its walls was heartbreaking.

Too many animals were coming in, and not enough were being adopted out.



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Sadly, the Dallas city shelter euthanized about 27,000 dogs and cats in 2007 alone.
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Finding a Solution

Animal lovers in Dallas knew the city had to address the pet overpopulation problem head-on to help reduce the number of homeless dogs and cats.

On June 25, the Dallas City Council voted 10-3 to enact an animal control ordinance that will require most dogs and cats to be spayed or neutered.

The city council's vote capped 11 months of hard work by animal welfare supporters and an appointed citizen advisory committee called the Animal Shelter Commission. Dallas now joins other cities and jurisdictions, including Los Angeles and Volusia County, Fla., in enacting spay-neuter laws.

Community Backing

"We had a lot of people supporting it, and we spent a lot of time educating the council," said Skip Trimble, a member of the Animal Shelter Commission and board member of the Texas Humane Legislative Network. "It was pretty hard-fought, but we ended up winning by a pretty good margin."

Dallas and cities and counties around the country are dealing with the enormous costs of uncontrolled pet breeding. Communities spend hundreds of thousands of dollars to control and eliminate unwanted pets and stray animals. Significant resources are spent collecting, feeding and caring for stray animals; reuniting lost animals with their owners or adopting them out; or euthanizing unadoptable animals.

"As long as the new ordinance is properly enforced, I think we're going to see, over a period of time, a reduction in the amount of homeless animals that Dallas Animal Services is going to have to deal with," said Jay Sabatucci, Texas state director for The Humane Society of the United States. "The city of Dallas has set an admirable example for alleviating the problem of pet overpopulation."

What It Will Mean

In 2007, 93 percent of the animals that came to the Dallas shelter were not spayed or neutered. Although the new spay-neuter provision covers most dogs and cats, service dogs, show dogs and cats, and licensed breeders are exempt from the ordinance. Dogs and cats younger than six months, or who have a health reason not to be altered, also are exempt from the spay-neuter requirement.

The ordinance also imposes the following:

Limits dogs and/or cats per household to six (or eight, for homes on properties larger than a half-acre)
Bans tethering of unsupervised dogs
Requires owners to provide shelter from the elements for dogs kept outside.
People who currently own a greater number of animals can apply to the city for grandfathering, allowing them to keep their animals without penalty.