New Animal Control.Org
Seven Dog-Related Services Local Government Should be Providing with an Eye to Eliminating the Barking & Biting Epidemics:
- Sponsoring mandatory, pre-licensing dog owner education classes designed to prevent potential problems and weed-out unfit owners.
- Maintaining a multi-level, performance-based dog owner licensing program to ensure that all dogs appearing in public are safe, competently supervised and under control.
- Ensuring the licensing of dogs to assure that immunizations are given and to make it possible to identify dogs and link them to their owners.
- Energetically enforcing all licensing requirements.
- Maintaining a vigorous proactive program of citing dog owners for every barking dog violation observed by the authorities.
- Arranging for the availability of monitors who can come out by appointment, or on a moment's notice, and stay for a period of time to verify a barking problem and issue a citation.
- Removing any continually noisy dog from the property, or taking other steps to quiet the animal within four hours of receiving a telephone complaint.
We're certainly not getting those services now. When you point the accusing finger at your elected representative, he'll tell you it's not his fault, because, "There are just too many dogs and too little money to provide services at that level," which is true. The other part, about it not being his fault, that's not true.
Our legislators passed the laws that allowed this enormous number of dogs to come in and live among us. Then they failed to pass dog food taxes and/or neglected to establish licensing fees in amounts sufficient to pay for the services necessitated by the presence of the large canine population that they allowed in. The city fathers need to either raise enough money to provide first-rate dog-related services for the current population of canines, or restrict the size of the dog population so their number is consistent with the city's capacity to provide services. The way things are now, they're dancing to the tune of industry, and burning the candle at both ends in the bargain, an act that is scorching dogs and humans alike.
We need to stop asking how cheap we can go and start asking how good we can get. Let's begin by deciding what services we require and determining how much that will cost. Then we'll raise that much money, instead of allowing a shortfall to exist and then using that as an excuse for providing inadequate services.
There is an awakening stirring. The powers that be should not expect the citizenry to go on indefinitely accepting the notion that government is an innocent bystander in all this when the behavior of government officials has clearly created and now perpetuates the sweep of our dog related problems.
This page is part of the New System section of New Animal Control.Org