This one’s for you NH people. I know there’s at least a couple of you who read here.
House Bill 0624 is going to modify the process of what happens when an animal is seized for abuse or the like. I just did a quick scan of the text, but at least one problem jumped at me right away.
Apparently current process: your dog is seized for abuse, you go to court, and if you’re convicted you’re expected to pay for the costs of the care for the animal while it was in custody.
What they want to do: your dog is seized for abuse, you get handed a bill for the care of the animal before you even get to court, and if you can’t pay that bill you lose custody of the dog regardless of whether you end up convicted or not. Cause you know, guilty till proven innocent or some such……
I can sympathize that caring for an animal, especially a sick or injured animal, while waiting for a case to go to court isn’t cheap and eats up the limited resources of shelters, but this isn’t the right solution either.
There have been SO MANY cases of reports of abuse that aren’t anywhere close to such. People who see an animal with “an obvious health problem” where the animal is under the care of a vet for the condition and the owner is taking the appropriate steps to care for the animal. And sometimes there isn’t a “health problem” at all beyond the reporter’s imagination and lack of knowledge of life.
Its not bad enough that you’re spending alot of money on the vet bills and medications that your sick animal needs, but now, cause some idiot reported you for abuse and it went viral (which happens WAY TOO OFTEN cause people are fucking stupid), and the local ACO gave in to pressure, they seized your dog, so now you have to pay a ton of money in legal bills to get him back and clear your name……but now they want to charge you for caring for the dog (which you were doing properly at home in the first place) and if you can’t pay that bill TOO you’re going to lose your dog no matter what the outcome of the court case……
Maryland folks, I’m being told that there’s a similar bill(s) pending in your state as well, I’ve not stopped to read them yet, but consider this a heads up you’ll want to check on!
I wasn’t aware of that bill. I’ll have to get ahold of my representative – I don’t like that provision either. I’ve seen a couple cases in the news that are exactly as you describe, people taking good care of elderly or imuno-compromised conditions, who are accused of animal abuse by someone just driving by.
Thats my biggest concern about this. I can sympathize with the concern that these animals can take up large quantities of resources to care for while the case works its way through the courts. And sometimes the animal really DOES need to be confiscated. But if the owner wasn’t doing anything wrong in the first place they shouldn’t loose their animal just because some busybody couldn’t keep their nose out of other folks business……