Pitfalls of Pet Limits
(I have featured Candi Moon on this Blog before, and this is a particularly well-written essay by her that focuses on the glaring deficiencies of the Dog and Cat by-laws… – animalman)
Following the discussion on Leigh Bennie’s show, ‘A Word on Legal Matters’ which went on air this past Monday, 26th July, at 7pm, I feel that a few comments need to be made.
If you missed the show, you can listen to the podcast here:
http://www.702.co.za/podcast/podcast_wordonlegalmatters.asp
This presentation was extremely one-sided, in that only those who promulgated, or are in favour of, the by-laws, were interviewed. No comments were taken from representatives of the animal welfare community and others who are negatively affected and who, furthermore, are working on the ground with the consequences of these by-laws and are in the best position to measure their effects.
Let me note here that I exclude NSPCA representatives from my definition of representatives of the welfare community. As an organisation that stands to benefit financially from the implementation of these by-laws and which already benefits financially from each euthanasia performed under its auspices, opinions given by such representatives should be taken with a pinch of salt at best.
The argument against the by-laws is simple; allowing less pets to be kept will mean less homes are available for needy animals, will deprive animals who already have caring homes of those homes and will prevent people from temporarily fostering animals or taking in strays.
All of this will impact negatively on an already overburdened welfare system, leading to increased homelessness, increased euthanasia and an increase in strays and cruelty to animals as pets are dumped. This will also negatively affect the human population due to the attendant noise and health issues as well as the dangers presented by abandoned, free roaming, unvaccinated and uncared for dogs.
The ability to apply for a permit to keep a greater number of animals is supposed to solve these problems, unfortunately, it creates more issues than it fixes.
Firstly, an already overextended Council staff is expected to take care of the permit application process. As their time is at a premium, this will encourage them to decline as many permits as possible, to lessen processing time and time spent on inspections. This is also taking time away from addressing valid complaints and lessening the effectiveness of the entire system. Nor are we guaranteed that Council staff will be sympathetic to our applications or to the issues we face, such as the potential loss of a beloved family member.
Secondly, there is no definition within the by-laws as to what constitutes a valid objection to an application. For example, can a person three blocks away be considered a neighbour and be allowed to object? Is a person required to supply proof of a noise issue in order for their objection to be considered valid or can they simply arbitrarily object?
According to the Council spokespeople on the show, objections must have grounds and the Council will assist in arbitration should there be objections. However, we are not guaranteed this is what will happen, as no provision is made for this in the text of the by-laws. Already, in practice, this is proving not to be true, with applications being turned down on the strength of a single unproved and uninvestigated objection.
The system is clearly open to abuse and as such I would call on the Council to instead focus its efforts on enforcing existing by-laws rather than bogging down the system with excessive regulation. They could also be attaching more severe penalties to by-law infringements, such as allowing a dangerous dog to roam free, in order to encourage public compliance.
To go back to the issue of permits, obtaining your permit is therefore a matter of luck and having sympathetic neighbours. If you live around one malicious person who does not like animals you are in as bad of a position as if no permit application process existed, with all the trauma which this creates for people and pets alike.
The programme began with discussion around people who take in 100 cats and are unable to care for them, or people who keep large numbers of outside only dogs on small properties, and how this law will enable the Council to address these situations. Such situations would be clearly unsanitory and can be satifactorily addressed by applying existing health and animal welfare laws.
Making emotional appeals against such cruelty is disingenious as they tar the person who has five or six well cared for cats or dogs with the same brush, as if they needs must also be hoarders or perpetrators of cruelty.
It needs to be understood that such extreme situations form a miniscule proportion of cases. Treating all pet owners as if they were hoarders is unfair as well as creating an unnecessary administrative burden. Not only that, the law potentially condemns well cared for animals to homelessness, which is of no benefit to anyone. The number of animals who will suffer under this law vastly exceeds the few who may benefit from its implementation and any concrete benefits are debatable.
As has been pointed out on numerous occassions, the number of animals on a property bears no relation to the ability of the owners of those pets to care for them. One animal may cause a problem and ten may not, depending on a number of factors, such as the size of the property and the means and dedication of the owner. The number of animals which a person can take care of is a decision best left to the person in question.
It was also stated that these laws are in line with international pet limit laws. While it is quite true that many countries have enacted pet limit laws, the Council has yet to produce any evidence that those laws have been in any way effective in curbing cruelty, health hazards or any of the other problems that they are supposed to address. To the best of my knowledge there is no such evidence. In fact, anecdotal evidence indicates that they have had the opposite effect. Just because everyone else is doing it is not a valid reason for enacting a law. Our Council could be using this as an opportunity to study the effectiveness of such laws, enacted elsewhere, and learning from this accordingly.
I can agree with Leigh’s guests in one respect, in that there is a need for consilidation of laws concerning cats and dogs. Putting measures such as definitions of acceptable care, and of cruelty, what constitutes a health hazard, laws dealing with free roaming pets, dangerous dogs and pet-related noise issues together, and streamlining the process of dealing with these issues, would make the law more accessible and user friendly for Council officials and the public alike. However, seeing as every problematic instance already has a law to address it, and that these are not enforced to due lack of manpower and public education, I fail to see what purpose an additional law serves, except to drain resources and cause unnecessary suffering.
Our main problem with regard to pet overpopulation arises due to the lack of sterilisation of pets and the fact that many people do not have the financial means to sterilise their animals. Whilst requiring mandatory sterilisation may be outside of the Council’s jurisdication, providing funding for initiatives to educate the public and to offer free sterlisation of pets to those who would like this, is not.
This would be vastly helpful in stemming the tide of unwanted pets, serving to decrease the numbers of strays, and of animals in shelters, along with the attendant animal cruelty, health problems and dangers to the public that uncontrolled breeding creates.
To my mind this presents a win win situation for everyone which also avoids the pitfalls that of necessity accompany the pet limit by-laws.
Candi Moon
(Footnote: I was informed this week that “the show was designed to give information to the people who needed LEGAL advice” – how good is legal advice that tells people to respect law that is unconstitutional and prejudicial? These by-laws do not have ONE redeeming quality; there is no benefit to anyone from their existence- animalman)
[...] the original post here: Pitfalls of Pet Limits – Hopeful Homeless Share and [...]
[...] http://hopeful.ws/2010/07/29/pitfalls-of-pet-limits/ [...]