North Carolina Dog Owners Alert
John Yates
Senate Votes On July 8 – Please Oppose SB 460!
by JOHN YATES
American sporting Dog Alliance
http://www.americansportingdogalliance.org
as...@csonline.net
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The North Carolina State Senate will vote Wednesday, July 8, 2009, on
legislation that purports to regulate commercial kennels, but which casts
a much wider net over many other kennel owners.
Vague definitions in the legislation will entrap many people who raise
dogs as an avocation, serious hobbyists who do their own training and
handling, hunt clubs, hunting plantations, and professional trainers and
handlers who also raise a few litters of puppies. It also will entrap many
responsible and quality-oriented breeders who raise a modest number of
puppies as an honest and honorable way to supplement their incomes, and
this is especially true of people who are disabled, retired or are living
on fixed incomes.
The American Sporting Dog Alliance urges all North Carolina dog owners to
immediately contact their state senators to voice strong and clear
opposition to this legislation. Contact information will be provided below.
The legislation, Senate Bill 460, was narrowly approved by the Senate
Finance Committee on June 30, and scheduled for a July 8 vote of the full
Senate. The committee amended the original legislation is a way that
supposedly excludes:
“…those kennels or establishments operated for the purpose of boarding or
training hunting, sporting, herding, show, or working dogs.”
However, those exemptions apply only to kennels that operate for the
purpose of boarding or training. They do not apply to many other kennels
that raise dogs for hunting, sporting, herding, show or working.
The exemption also does not include kennels that are operated for several
different purposes, which describes many if not most kennels. A typical
kennel might train dogs for hunting, handle dogs in competition, breed a
few litters of puppies, offer stud services of high quality dogs, and do
some boarding as a source of income. SB 460 would entrap this kennel.
It also must be noted that commercial kennel regulations modeled under
federal standards require an almost institutional environment for dogs.
This would have a serious impact on small-scale breeders who raise as few
as four litters a year to supplement their income or offset the costs of
showing or competing with their own dogs. Commercial standards would make
it illegal to raise puppies in a home environment (no home in America,
even in the wealthiest neighborhoods, could pass a federal kennel
inspection) and require major cash investments that actually would reduce
the quality of care given to their dogs.
Virtually everyone who falls into the trap of SB 460 would be forced to
shut down their kennel if they are of modest financial means. Like most
animal rights laws, SB 460 is targeted especially at poor and working
class people who cannot afford a large financial outlay.
SB 460 defines a commercial kennel as “any person who owns or maintains 15
or more intact female dogs of breeding age and 30 or more puppies for the
purpose of sale.”
That definition is extremely ambiguous and entrapping.
Many serious hobbyists own 15 intact females (this counts sexually mature
puppies under evaluation, competition dogs, breeding dogs, retired dogs
and personal family pets), and 30 puppies can be produced in as few as
three litters in some breeds, and in four litters for the majority of
breeds. These people are not commercial breeders by any stretch of the
imagination, and yet they are entrapped by this legislation.
Most hunt clubs and hunting plantations also would be entrapped, even if
they sell only a couple of dogs or puppies a year. Many professional
trainers and amateurs from northern states spend their winters in North
Carolina, and would be impacted by this legislation.
This definition is ambiguous in that it equates possession of female dogs
and puppies with a commercial operation, which simply is inaccurate in
many cases. A serious field trialer, for example, may have 30 puppies
under evaluation as prospects for competition, and many professional
trainers and handlers raise a few litters of champion-sired puppies
without selling any of them until they can be evaluated as field trial
prospects. A common scenario is for field trial handlers to find owners
for the best pups on the condition that they remain with the trainer for
training and competition.
Ominously, “puppy” is not defined in the legislation. Many people
interpret the word “puppy” to apply to any dog under a year of age. This
definition would significantly widen the net of SB 460.
Hunt clubs and hunting plantations often keep all of the puppies they
raise in order to train them for use by their members, customers and
guests.
Moreover, numbers have nothing to do with the quality of care given to
dogs at a kennel. Many plantations have 50 or more bird dogs, but employ
several trainers, handlers and kennel helpers to give the dogs a very high
standard of care and personal attention.
Further ambiguity arises in the words “for the purpose of sale.” In a
kennel of 30 dogs, for example, perhaps only a half-dozen are available
for sale, and the rest are not. The wording of SB 460 entraps any kennel
that sells even one dog or puppy, if it falls above the number of dogs and
puppies specified.
The ambiguity is compounded because the legislation does not say if the
numbers apply at any given time, over the course of the license year or
over several years. Thus, a trainer who owns only six dogs and raises only
one litter of puppies a year, could be entrapped if he or she trains 40
dogs or puppies owned by other people.
Laws should be clear and should not contain vague definitions that can be
interpreted differently by enforcement officers and judges. SB 460 falls
far short of this measure.
The American Sporting Dog Alliance also has several other concerns about
this deeply flawed legislation:
· We object on principle to commercial breeders being singled out
for additional and intense regulation. The Bill of Rights gives every
American the right to fair and equal treatment under the law. This
legislation denies that basic constitutional rights to a specific group of
citizens and business owners, and this is just plain un-American. All dogs
deserve the same legal protections to assure adequate and humane care, and
all people who own or raise dogs deserve to have their civil rights
respected by government.
· The legislation gives the frightening power to the state Board of
Agriculture to develop special regulations for commercial kennels without
any kind of public participation or oversight. This provision essentially
gives the Board a blank check to create horrible regulations that will
destroy many high-quality kennels. This is wrong. These regulations will
cover all aspects of kennel design and management, veterinary care, and
exercise requirements, and impose major paperwork burdens on kennel
owners. In light of our considerable experience in other states, this
sounds like giving a blank check to the Humane Society of the United
States (HSUS) and other radical animal rights groups.
· The state would be given the power to deny, revoke or suspend any
kennel’s registration for any violation or alleged violation of any
regulation or rule that is developed. A decision to revoke, deny or
suspend is purely arbitrary and need not be proven, as the law contains no
provision to allow for a hearing or trial to protect a kennel owner from
unjust enforcement, and provides no mechanism for an appeal of any kind.
This, too, is un-American and a denial of the constitutional right of due
process under the law.
· The state also would be given absolute, arbitrary and
uncontestable power to seize and sell or euthanize any “animals” in the
possession of a kennel alleged to be unlicensed as a commercial operation.
Given the ambiguities in the definitions that we explored earlier in this
report, this power is wholly unjust and unacceptable. There is no
provision to appeal or challenge this determination, and all “animals”
owned by a kennel operator could be seized. In fact, the kennel owner
would be prohibited from owning any animal for a full five years after
being adjudicated as unlicensed by the state. The wording makes this
prohibition apply to personal pets, personal hunting dogs, cats, cows,
pigs, goats, sheep, rabbits and even pet hamsters owned by the kennel
operator.
· The legislation requires dog owners to provide “adequate”
veterinary care, and to obtain a veterinary examination of all dogs before
they are bred, but these concepts are not defined. In other states,
veterinary care is required under the umbrella of “adequate” for even
minor illnesses or injuries, fleas and internal parasites: conditions that
could be treated easily, effectively and safely by a dog’s owner. The
examination to determine medial fitness for breeding could mean anything
from a simple visual check, to a requirement for extensive and expensive
testing. Every veterinarian could interpret this differently, which would
create highly uneven applications of the law. There are no established
objective veterinary standards for fitness for breeding, and many
veterinarians might have conflicting opinions about this issue.
· And state and local inspectors would be given unlimited access to
a kennel owner’s business, facilities, home and records for inspection.
This, too, is un-American, and the Bill of Rights guarantees every citizen
the protection from searches and seizures in the absence of a warrant from
a court based on probable cause of a violation. It allows inspectors to go
on unconstitutional “fishing expeditions” to invade the privacy and
personal sanctity of everyone who has a kennel.
For these reasons and more, the American Sporting Dog Alliance urges all
North Carolinians to immediately contact the senator who represents them.
This must be done quickly, as the Senate vote is scheduled for Wednesday,
July 8. Please clearly express strong opposition, and ask your senator to
vote “no” on SB 460.
Here is a link to each senator’s contact information:
http://www.ncga.state.nc.us/gascripts/members/memberList.pl?
sChamber=Senate . Click on a senator’s name, and a page will be displayed
to show phone numbers and email addresses. We suggest that emails be
followed up by either a phone call, fax or hand-delivered letter to the
senator’s office.
Here is a link to the text of the legislation, which includes the most
recent amendment:
http://www.ncga.state.nc.us/Sessions/2009/Bills/Senate/HTML/S460v3.html .
The American Sporting Dog Alliance wishes to sincerely thank you for
helping North Carolina dog owners to defeat this burdensome, ambiguous and
unconstitutional legislation.
The American Sporting Dog Alliance represents owners, breeders and
professionals who work with breeds of dogs that are used for hunting. We
also welcome people who work with other breeds, as legislative issues
affect all of us. We are a grassroots movement working to protect the
rights of dog owners, and to assure that the traditional relationships
between dogs and humans maintains its rightful place in American society
and life. The American Sporting Dog Alliance also needs your help so that
we can continue to work to protect the rights of dog owners. Your
membership, participation and support are truly essential to the success
of our mission. We are funded solely by your donations in order to
maintain strict independence.
Please visit us on the web at http://www.americansportingdogalliance.org .
Our email is as...@csonline.net .
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