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Vicious Animals Page 2 State Law A number of concerns have risen from our experience applying the general statutes that apply to potentially dangerous and dangerous dogs in North Carolina. Some of these regard the making of such declarations and others concern compliance with the requirements for keeping a declared animal. Notable concerns from an enforcement standpoint are: 1. No microchipping requirement (leaving legal issues of identification) 2. No leashing requirement on property when an owner is in attendance 3. Less than unambiguous criteria for confinement (“in a securely enclosed and locked pen”) 4. No impoundment authority when there are infractions Notable concerns also arise from the perspective of reviewing bite reports made by residents to decide whether an animal should be declared potentially dangerous. The primary concern is this: • A “non-severe bite” on the owner’s property is not a basis for deeming a dog potentially dangerous under NCGS. Severe in this context means “any physical injury that results in broken bones, or disfiguring lacerations or required cosmetic surgery or hospitalization.” Consider then a child bitten by a neighbor’s dog on the property of the dog owner in which there are multiple punctures and one or more lacerations, but nothing that qualifies the injuries as “severe.” There is thus no basis for declaring the dog a danger with the purpose of preventing another incident of the same kind. Local Law The last gap has been filled by the available local ordinances. In other words, dogs responsible for “non- severe” bites on the owner’s property have been declared vicious under broader and more inclusive provisions of local ordinance. Until the recent case I described earlier, our operational understanding has been that there must be criminal trespass or trespass for criminal purposes. We understood these two things: 1. The commission of a crime on the dog owner’s property entailed a trespass and thus that a dog bite is excepted from the general provision. 2. That a person having been officially trespassed by the police or the property owner should not be on the dog owner’s property and thus that a dog bite is excepted from the general provision.