North Carolina Dog Owners Alert

Senate Votes On July 8 – Please Oppose SB 460!

by JOHN YATES
American sporting Dog Alliance
http://www.americansportingdogalliance.org
asda@...

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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 asda@... .

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