January 26th, 2012 | 
Author: People ask me regularly why it’s so hard to prosecute animal cruelty.
The simplest answer is that laws to protect animals do not take into account the depths of human cruelty, nor do they completely take into account the change in human attitudes toward animals over the last century. Many laws still treat all animals as property, no different than a car or a piece of furniture, and even those laws that do try to protect animals are often poorly written and/or fail to distinguish between companion animals and livestock.
That said, every year we keep trying to improve the laws that govern the care of our pets. One example would be the law that allows Harris County to prohibit roadside sales of animals. I’m thrilled that Harris County has been able to make this important step forward. I just would like to see Montgomery County (and every other county) do likewise. As it stands, when Harris County ran the roadside puppy sellers out of town, they all came up the road to Montgomery County. And here, it’s unfortunately legal, because our population is less than the number specified in Texas law to enable us to ban them.
We came close last year to updating that law, but Governor Perry vetoed it because it was poorly written and would have been easily interpreted to include ANY roadside vendors, not just puppy selling scum. We’ll try again. And we’ll keep trying till we get there. I would also like to see improvements to the laws that specify minimum standards of care for pets.
Right now, under Texas Health and Safety Code 42.092, nonlivestock (companion) animals must have access to “food, water, care, or shelter provided to the extent required to maintain the animal in a state of good health.” Unfortunately, I can’t find anything that specifies what these adequate provisions would consist of.
Care and shelter would seem to be the grayest areas here. My understanding is that the animal must have access to someplace that will offer protection from the weather. But is the someplace supposed to be an insulated dog house, or a cardboard box? Or a place on the sofa? (Obviously!) I have seen people claim that an abandoned car on blocks in their yard constitutes adequate shelter, and with the way the law is currently written, they may well be able to convince a judge that no law has been broken.
Care is another issue. Those of us who live and breathe animal welfare understand the importance of regular veterinary care, vaccinations, and grooming. But the law does not. Separate laws require rabies vaccinations – for the protection of humans and livestock, not for the protection of the actual dogs and cats. It is, as I understand it, illegal to allow a sick or injured animal to linger on in pain without treatment, but perfectly legal to shoot the animal to end its suffering, even if the ailment or injury could easily be treated, as long as the shooter is the animal’s legal custodian. And that’s just wrong.
We see many animals surrendered to the shelter with untreated illnesses or injuries that have gone on so long that the animal’s condition is now irreparable. If people had treated them promptly, it would have been no big deal. And yet there is rarely a legal penalty for such neglect, because the law does not spell out in detail exactly WHAT constitutes adequate care and shelter.
Another nasty loophole in the law has to do with unowned animals. Judges have on several occasions refused to prosecute cruelty to stray animals because they don’t belong to anyone, which means that no crime against someone’s property has occurred.
The bottom line is that the law does not account for an animal’s feelings or emotional well-being, or for the value that animal has as a member of the family. And we need the law to catch up with the 21st century attitude toward animal welfare, instead of staying rooted in its 18th century agrarian roots, in which all animals were only worth their intrinsic value for meat, milk production, or other concretely measurable markers.
In my next column, we”ll talk about why so few counties and municipalities actually have cruelty investigators. And why I would love to see Montgomery County get one!
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