ORD-2008-069 - Proposed Animal Ordinance Amendment on the Tethering of Dogs

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Elaine Modlin read a prepared letter to the County Commissioners. She is an Animal Control Officer from Laurinburg, NC. "Dear Commissioners: The City of Laurinburg passed its first tethering ordinance in November, 1997 with an effective date of December 1998. The first ordinance allowed dog owners to tether their dogs for up to 8 hours within a 24 -hour period. This proved to be too time - consuming to enforce, so in 2000 we amended the ordinance to one hour within a 24 -hour period. We passed our tethering ordinance for two main reasons (1) the safety of our citizens and (2) for the humane treatment of animals. On the issue of safety, our records indicated that fifty -one percent of our dog bites were from dogs that were confined on chains or had been chained and had broken loose. This is compared to only 19 percent of bites from dogs that were confined in a fence. On the issue of inhumane treatment of animals, we were constantly receiving calls in reference to chained dogs. They were usually tangled up and unable to get to shelter or water. Many of these cases had been like this for long periods of time. Attempts to correct or eliminate these situations were futile and time - consuming. Passing this ordinance has definitely improved our records for protecting our citizens from dangerous dogs. It has helped eliminate residences with multiple dogs chained out, reducing such complaints as nuisance barking and odor. Our cruelty cases are significantly reduced as well as our dog bites from chained or loose dogs and complaints about dogs running loose. We have also seen a dramatic reduction in litters of puppies, partly because of the tethering ordinance, but also because of the state spay /neuter law. Although enforcing this ordinance had brought on extra work and time in the beginning, after almost 10 years our impoundments have been reduced by half. And most of these are strays, not owned by our citizens. It has been very rewarding seeing the addition of fenced in backyards and the dogs happily running around. Owners have commented to me that their dogs seem happier and easier to take care of. I hope that Orange County decides to pass a tethering ordinance, you will be making the lives of your residents safer and improving on the lives of many deserving dogs." Pat Sanford spoke at the last meeting and said that she is a member of the ASAB and she supports this amendment. All of the members of the ASAB are from Orange County. Sandi Coy is the Chairperson of Responsible Dog Owners of the Eastern States. She is also the new CEO of the United Responsible Dog Owners International. She is from Kentucky and was asked by residents of Orange County to come and speak. She said that she came tonight to try and set a few myths to bed. She said that laws of this sort are very difficult to enforce and they tend to give another law on the books that people are not going to follow. It is almost impossible to enforce, especially if there is a short limit for tethering. She said that a lot of the groups that try and start the anti - tethering movement have usually quoted a study done by the CDC, which was done in 1994 and is called, "Which Dogs Bites, a Case - Controlled Study of Risk Factors." This study was done on dogs that were taken in by Denver Metro Animal Services in 1991, so the study is already 17 years old. She said that the information is probably not still pertinent. Also, there were lots of exclusions in the study. The study started out with 991 dogs, and by the time the exclusions were done, the number was down to 357 dogs. She said that there are many flaws in this study. After this study was done, with all of the flaws, and the authors even said that the study was flawed, the Animal Rights Movement still uses it. She quoted something from the study: "One hundred and sixteen were aggressive when they were approached in their fence. Only 64 of the tethered dogs were aggressive. Our results, however, showed no significant difference in the behavior