I have been involved in rescue for years. This happens more than you want to think about. I can tell you it would really piss you off to know that not much really happens to the dog owner. Sometimes everything goes well and the owner will get a fine. Piss off the right judge and they will get a fine and jail time. Most state laws the fines are low (usually under $1000) the jail time is short (a year or less) and I'll never understand it.
The rescue I work from has put together a group that are campaigning for harsher laws here in our state. I hope that all of you take a look at the animal abuse penalties in your state and at the very least call a law maker even if it's just local. We have to start somewhere! While your at it take a look at the laws and you will probably be surprised at how vague they are. Which is the reason people don't recieve much penalty. Abuse can be hard to prove with the way some laws are written.
I am so inspired by the people that work tirelessly to get the animals out of places like this. I have no doubt they worked through lunch or dinner because they wanted to get the dogs out. They saw horrible things and smelled or touched worse. But they kept going because they wanted to save the dogs. I have been in places like this and trust me, you want to go home and shower in bleach! They go to bed crying about what they saw and what the dogs must have endured. The next day they get up and do it again.
Months go by, sometimes years because it can be hard to build a case, believe it or not! Then the word comes down that someone walked beecuse of some stupid technically or they just couldn't build a case.
Not everyone can be on the frontlines, I get it! But we can help by doing some research on the laws and putting a bug in a lawmakers ear! I feel it's so important to make the penalty fit the crime! Find your rep and make that call!
"The rescue I work from has put together a group that are campaigning for harsher laws here in our state. I hope that all of you take a look at the animal abuse penalties in your state and at the very least call a law maker even if it's just local. We have to start somewhere! While your at it take a look at the laws and you will probably be surprised at how vague they are. Which is the reason people don't recieve much penalty. Abuse can be hard to prove with the way some laws are written."
@GennyB What rescue, what state?
Sounds like Ohio has a law that gives judges more teeth. Now the challenge is to crowd source info to more rapidly collect and combine red flags as reported. This could be an easy homework assigbment for an AI, for example, guided by a dog savvy person familiar with rescues and Humane Societies in all the States.
I am not a show dog person nor am I a fan of authoritarian government top-down control but I hope DPCA will do more than issue careful PR pieces,
Especially if some grass roots energy could be harnessed either there or UDC or ideally by both, if only to direct folk in the right direction.
Even though neither AKC nor DPCA nor UDC have a responsibility to regulate BYB or commercial breeders as that is a state level issue,
it would be seemly as the Breed Club(s) to at least take some leadershio on this...
Starting the Board level, on behalf of the breed. There are a couple of accomplished business types iirc and one with PR experience if resume is true...this is a pretty basic info campaign if done right, that all people can share and draw upon for best practices, model laws, how to git-r-done.
Go to DPCA and read "about us" and start emailing after the dust settles and offer to help in some way.
For example I have seen at least one post on "the other doberman webforum" by a Georgia DPCA chapter thats actively pushing that state to do more.
When horrible examples like this show up, sometimes just a liitle effort shared by all is enough to tip a chain of "preference cascades" of better legislation in one place that can be copied in others...like the Uniform Code in other various regulatory or licensing issues.
Good book on commercial dog breeders just out by Kim Kaven: The Dog Merchants
I listened to her interviewed on the Functional Dog Collab podcast about her research and how the best commercial breeders despise the worst- maybe a way to get them involved via the USDA who regulate them?
This is an apolitical issue EVERYONE can agree on, to do some good for dogs...
www.13abc.com
head for the last 20yrs!!!!!!!!!WTF
