[ SHOWGSD-L ] more on Louisville ordinance & the director of Animal Services
- From: Artisanpup@xxxxxxx
- To: showgsd-l@xxxxxxxxxxxxx, WORK_GOLD@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Sat, 6 Jan 2007 12:43:04 EST
Forwarded with Permission:
No More Dogs in My Old Kentucky Home
by Cindy Cooke, Legislative Specialist
Published in "Bloodlines" magazine
On Wednesday morning, December 20, 2006 at 3:45 a.m., the Louisville City
Council passed the most controversial animal ordinance in the city's
history. The ordinance is 91 pages long and was vigorously opposed by every
dog organization in the region. How did this happen in a region known for
its dedication to animal husbandry in the horse industry? It's a long, sad
story.
Like so many bad laws in recent times, it started with a dog attacking a
child. In this case, the child was killed by her family's dog. This
incident was followed almost immediately by a fatal attack on an elderly
man by two dogs as he walked home from work. Since all of the dogs involved
in these two attacks were alleged to have been "pit bulls," the Louisville
ordinance started as, you guessed it, a breed-specific dangerous dog law.
This was certainly a bad solution to the problem of dog bites, but in the
interim between the dog attacks and the passage of the bill, it morphed
into one of the most restrictive dog ownership laws in the country --
without, however, any breed specific restrictions. How did this happen?
To understand this story, we have to go back to 2005 when the city of
Louisville decided that their Animal Services department needed a radical
overhaul. To that end, they hired the first veterinarian in the
department's history to serve as director of Animal Services. The man they
hired was Dr. Gilles Meloche. And it was to Dr. Meloche that Councilwoman
Cheri Bryan Hamilton turned to draft an ordinance to address what she
perceived as a "pit bull" problem in her community.
Dr. Meloche's first efforts immediately drew fire from the responsible
dog owners of Louisville. For most of the year, dog breeders and owners
tried to reason with Dr. Meloche and Councilwoman Hamilton, to no
avail. The ordinance went through revision after revision, but without any
real compromise from Dr. Meloche's camp. He and Councilwoman Hamilton
ignored every effort by the dog community to help produce a pet-
and breeder-friendly ordinance. Each revision (and there were at least 11
of them) was as bad as the last.
To understand Dr. Meloche's resistance to working with the dog community,
it helps to know a little about his background. Meloche began his career as
a teen-aged dairy farmer in Quebec, Canada, after he was forced to leave
school when his father had an accident. In 1982, he entered Montreal
University where he studied veterinary medicine. He graduated in 1986, and
that July became director and owner of the De la Cité Veterinary Hospital
in Quebec.
In 1995, Meloche pleaded guilty to an administrative charge of failing to
keep adequate records for a controlled substance and failure to write a
suitable veterinary prescription. His veterinary license was revoked and he
was fined.
For the next four years, Meloche taught at College Lionel-Groulx in
Sainte-Therese, Quebec, while he earned an MBA from Concordia University.
He left his job and was out of work until March 2001, when he was hired as
the animal control administrator for the city of Durham, NC. He was fired
from that job after only ten months.
According to the chair of the Durham County Animal Control Advisory
Committee, Dr. Meloche had a controlling personality: "Part of the problem
is that he would get, I don't want to say a loose cannon, he'd get an idea
stuck in his brain and there was no way to shake it out of him."
In February 2002, Dr. Meloche moved to Florida where he became director
of the Tallahassee- Leon Community Animal Services Center. By this time,
Dr. Meloche had an American veterinary license which, combined with
his MBA, made him a desirable candidate for the job. Given a mandate to
reduce euthanasia statistics, Dr. Meloche took this opportunity to
impose his no-kill philosophy. The shelter soon filled up and eventually
reached near double capacity. Shelter workers finally complained that
animals were dying in their cages and that the facility reeked of urine
and feces. As one worker put it, "We all thought he was going to be the
breath of fresh air we were looking for. Gradually it became a nightmare."
Even Dr. Meloche's supporters felt that his plan for Tallahassee was
unrealistic. Dr. Meloche says of his time in Tallahassee: "I did a
fantastic job." A July 2005 audit of that Tallahassee facility, however,
found that overcrowding had led to inhumane conditions and that the
overcrowding was a direct result of Meloche's no-kill policy.
Meloche arrived in Louisville in 2005, and Councilwoman
Hamilton's request for a new animal control ordinance was like manna from
heaven. Here was a real opportunity for him to put the "CONTROL" in animal
control. But why would he think that Louisville would provide a friendly
environment for such a draconian bill?
For starters, the Mayor has pledged to build a new shelter and
added $100,000 to the city budget to train and hire new shelter employees.
For another, the Kentucky Humane Society and the Shamrock Foundation,
a Louisville-based charity devoted to reducing pet overpopulation,
both supported him. So Meloche must have been surprised when his first
draft was greeted with a howl of protest from every dog organization in
Kentucky. As he had in the past, however, Dr. Meloche
remained uncompromising in his determination to exert near total control
over pet ownership in his dominion.
By September 2005, the ordinance had been redrafted nine times. At that
point, the American Veterinary Medical Association sent a letter opposing
the breed-specific aspects of the ordinance. After yet another amendment,
the Kentucky Department of Fish and Wildlife weighed in to explain how the
proposed ordinance would harm hunters. Still, Dr. Meloche stood his ground.
The ordinance continued to be revised right up until the start of the
December 19 council meeting.
The meeting lasted until 3:45 a.m., with opponents arguing that the
council should not vote on a bill that none of them except its author had
even read in its entirety. In the end, however, party loyalty
trumped reason. All of the Democrats on the council voted for the
ordinance and all of the Republicans opposed it. And that, as they say, was
that.
Remember, I told you that this bill started as a breed-specific dangerous
dog law. In the end, however, the breed-specific language was deleted
completely. Instead, dog limits, breeder licenses, and other onerous
restrictions on dog ownership and breeding were introduced. According to
the Louisville Courier-Journal, some of the key points of the bill are as
follows:
a.. Sets these annual license and permit fees: altered dog or cat,
$9; unaltered dog or cat, $50 (but only $35 if the animal is currently
licensed); potentially dangerous dog, $250; dangerous dog, $500.
b.. Defines a "dangerous dog" as one that kills or harms someone in an
unprovoked attack, maims a pet or livestock, is used in a crime, or is kept
as a fighting dog.
c.. Defines a "potentially dangerous dog" as any dog that bites,
scratches or bruises someone "in an aggressive manner" or bites or injures
a pet or livestock.
d.. Requires that "dangerous" and "potentially dangerous" dogs be kept
behind a 6-foot fence.
e.. Requires "animal dealers" to buy $300 licenses. People who sell only
one litter in a 12-month period do not need one.
f.. Prohibits the sale of a "dangerous dog" or a "potentially dangerous
dog" without permission from the Animal Services director.
g.. Requires a dog or cat in heat to be confined, safe from contact with
another dog or cat.
h.. Requires veterinarians to provide copies of vaccination certificates
to Metro Animal Services.
i.. Prohibits using a buried-wire electronic fence to restrain an
unaltered dog.
j.. Requires unaltered dogs to be kept on a 4-foot leash while off their
owner's property.
k.. Requires unaltered dogs impounded by Animal Services to be spayed or
neutered if owner wants to reclaim them.
l.. Defines a nuisance animal as one that "irritates, perturbs or damages
rights and privileges of others" -- and could include dogs that howl or
bark, chase people or cars, or roam free.
m.. Requires unaltered dogs to be microchipped.
n.. Prohibits keeping more than three dogs outside on residential lots of
a half-acre or less.
o.. Prohibits keeping more than seven dogs outside on residential lots
between one-half and two acres.
If you're not too depressed after reading this list, you can read the
entire 91 page ordinance on the web at
_http://www.louisvilhttp://www.lhttp://www.louishttp://www.louishttp://www.loh
tt_
(http://www.louisville-pets.com/Chapter91Animals_Floor_Substitute_as_amended.pdf)
As you can see from reading the above list or the ordinance itself, the
real purpose of this bill is to make it expensive, inconvenient, or
impossible for most people to breed dogs. The supporters of this bill are
willing to throw all of the city's responsible breeders and owners under a
bus in order to prevent what they claim to be an epidemic of pet
overpopulation. There are two big problems with this position. First, only
15% of Louisville's dogs are currently licensed. No reasonable person can
infer that making licensing more expensive and complicated will cause an
increase in dog licensing. Secondly, there is no evidence that Louisville
even HAS a pet overpopulation problem.
I did a quick check on the internet and found that in 2003, the
population of Louisville, Kentucky was about 4.1 million. During that same
year, Metro Animal Services took in 11, 253 dogs, of which 1189 were
reclaimed by their owners, 646 were adopted and 6985 were euthanized. If
only half of the 4.1 million residents of Louisville owned a dog (most
studies estimate about 64% of Americans are dog owners), that means that
Animal Services euthanized about 3.5% of the dog population. Is that number
too high? Maybe, but it's certainly not high enough to justify such a
radical imposition on the property rights of American citizens.
It's very clear that if we are going to stop our cities from falling like
dominoes before the animal rights juggernaut, we are going to have play
hardball. Like the big boys over at the NRA -- HARDball. What does that
mean? It means we must:
a.. Spend money on our cause. How about donating the price of one puppy
or 10% of your puppy sales to the National Animal Interest Alliance in 2007?
b.. Spend time on our issues. Start going to council meetings in your
city. Introduce yourself as a dog expert. Offer to be available to help
with dog-related issues.
c.. Reward our friends, punish our enemies. Cheri Hamilton should be the
first member of the Louisville City Council to be sent packing. Getting rid
of an incumbent is not easy-you must find an electable candidate to oppose
her, you must help fund him/her, you must make phone calls in the district,
and you must reach out to the media at every opportunity.
d.. Recruit the pet owners. Most pet owners know nothing about these
issues. If they did, they would rise up in a huge angry wave of opposition.
If they don't know about what's going on, whose fault is that?
Let's face it. We expect nonsense like this in California. When a bill
like this can pass in Kentucky, our house is not only on fire, the fire
department isn't coming to save us. We'd better get the buckets out and
save ourselves.
~Jill
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