Mountain State Matters

The Beckley Register-Herald reported last week that the Beckley City Council is considering tightening an ordinance to limit the number of cats and dogs people can have outside their homes. The ordinance would restrict homeowners to “three cats, three dogs, period.”

According to both [City Manager Bob] Cannon and Mayor Emmett Pugh, this comes after the city has handled numerous complaints about some residents having extremely large numbers of pets. Some of these pet owners, they say, have caused grief for their neighbors with noise from barking dogs and the smell of feces coming from their properties. Cannon said he receives about five complaints about dogs per day.

Excessive pets are often problems in poorer areas. The New York Times published a story about pets in Tennessee last July, reporting how in impoverished communities pet owners often can’t afford to spay or neuter animals, and local governments may not require licensing or provide animal shelters.

But is Beckley’s solution the answer? If this proposed ordinance becomes law, I can see the most common solution being abandoning or killing stray animals. As far as I can tell, the proposal doesn’t put into place free spaying and neutering programs, which would probably be a more effective way to control the city’s animal population. Actually, this reminds me vaguely of China’s one-child policy, though I’m not going to make a comparison between a stray dog and a child.

Photo by: *MarS