Dog-Sense: For All Dog Owners

Impound, Spay, Neuter

You know animal rights whackos want to make purebred dogs extinct but it gets personal when your show dog is impounded.

Jan 29, 2013

First-hand report, name withheld

You’re at work when a neighbor calls to say that one of your dogs was let out of the yard by the UPS man. You panic, rush home, and learn your promising young show dog was picked up by Santa Fe animal control.

Relief is short-lived when you also learn that no amount of money can bail your dog out of impoundment until he has been castrated!

While the new regulations provide exemption for service animals and dogs that have proof of a champion title from a “nationally recognized club”, your dog isn’t even a year old and not mature enough to show. You rush to the shelter.

There, you protest that this is the first time any of your dogs have been off property while off leash. You have a secure fence. You are a responsible, law abiding owner not a fortune teller who could foresee a delivery man’s carelessness. It doesn’t matter.

You plead that you LOVE the dog. The clerk covers a laugh. Trying a different tact, you point out that he is a valuable breeding animal, worth thousands of dollars. The bored clerk just nods and drops the surgery form into a folder without so much as a glance up at you.

Desperate, you say “if you impound my car, I pay the fine and get it back, right?” She shrugs, “this ain’t no car.” Feeling control slipping away, you retort “Right! And what you are doing would be like returning my car back to me with no engine or transmission!”

She finally looks up. “You want me to call a deputy? ‘Cause otherwise, we are done.”

You reach for your cell phone as you exit the building. Calls to your wife result in a short conversation with an attorney. He tells you there’s nothing he can do other than file a lawsuit for damages to your property.

Shaking, you hang up and sit down on the steps. The sun is sinking, right along with your spirits.

Sitting there, disoriented, weak with anger, you wonder if the veterinary profession helps push these laws? Certainly spay and neuter is profitable whether a compliant owner pays or the taxpayer forks over the dough, offset by ever higher city and county taxes.

It must be a racket because you've heard that mandatory spay neuter laws are proliferating like mold on cheese, and with the same toxic effect.

You remember reading about Animal Enterprise Terrorism^[2] where Animal Control seizes valuable animals, impounds them, and then essentially sells them. You shake your head, wondering, is that the game in Sante Fe? Lots of wealthy, artsy, “green” people live here, people who would much prefer a cat or a mongrel, spayed or neutered of course.

You rise, realize you’re still holding the cell phone. You call home, tell your wife to make coffee and sandwiches, you’re on the way and you have a lot of research and calls to make. Glancing back at the “shelter” vowing to have answers and an injunction by morning, you head for the parking lot, head high, determination in your step.

What you don't know is that sparsely populated New Mexico is one of the worst states for animal owners. One would think a state that erects billboards advertising free housing, food stamps, and a long list of other social services would have a HEART. Albuquerque does. Albuquerque’s HEART Ordinance [1] is pure animal rights at work.

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