THERE OUGHT to be a law....
St Louis Post-Dispatch Friday, April
01 2005
Chain reaction
By Sarah Newman Of the Post-Dispatch
TThat's
what Connie Davie of Creve Coeur thought when she saw dogs tied
outside, all alone, day and night, in every kind of weather. In
fact, she thought, as images of the lonely, pathetic-looking canines
kept creeping into her mind, surely there is a law against such
obvious abuse.
Curious, Davie called her local police department to find out just
what the law said.
It
said nothing. There was no law. As long as a dog has access to food,
water and shelter, the law was happy.
But
Davie had seen too many tethered dogs with "access to food,
water and shelter" that were not happy. And that made her not
happy, too.
"So
I thought, well, if there's no law, then we've got to make a law,"she
said.
Davie
does not make a habit of fighting city hall. The retired elementary-school
math teacher with two grown daughters would rather spend time with
her husband, Richard. Or entertaining her four young grandchildren
(not necessarily all at once). Or volunteering for Stray Rescue
of St. Louis. Or walking Eddie and Sherry, the dogs she fostered
for Stray Rescue and ended up keeping.
But,
she said, "I saw a need in my area for a law that addressed
this issue of tethering." Animals were suffering.
And
when animals are suffering, Davie acts.
"I
contacted my council representative, Beth Kistner, and I told her
of my concern about dogs being continuously tethered and about the
lack of legislation in Creve Coeur to deal with it," she said.
"Beth
was very sympathetic to my proposal, and she understood exactly
what I was talking about. We worked very well together."
Davie
did reams of research on the subject of dog tethering. But she gives
Kistner much of the credit for the ordinance she ended up presenting
to the Creve Coeur City Council.
"I
worked with Beth for three to four months drafting an ordinance
that we thought would be enforceable. I also worked with our police
chief,
Don Kayser, since he would be the one who'd have to enforce whatever
we came up with," she said.
"When I first met with the police chief, I told him I didn't
expect the police to be cruising around looking for chained dogs.
And I told the city council that I didn't expect the police to be
the dog gestapo. But if someone calls to report that a dog is being
mistreated, the police need to have the leverage to act on it."
Davie presented her case to the city council in November. When she
returned two weeks later for the first reading of the proposed ordinance,
she said, one of the council members told her he originally pegged
her as an animal-rights radical.
"Then he said that in the two weeks since my presentation he
had played golf several times and that from the golf course he could
see a dog tied in a yard doing nothing but pace," Davie said.
"He said the dog had paced so much it had worn a rut in the
yard. And he told me, 'That dog was so pathetic. I understand now
where you're coming from, and I agree with you. It's not a good
thing. You've opened my eyes.' "
When the ordinance was voted on in January, it passed unanimously.
Davie smiled when she recalled that the final draft of the ordinance
had a mistake in it. "It said that a dog could not be tied
out continuously for more than six hours. It was supposed to say
eight hours, because we wanted to take people who work into consideration.
When one of the council members pointed out the typo, another council
member said they'd be happy if it said we couldn't chain a dog outside
at all," she said.
Davie still is amazed at the relative ease with which the ordinance
passed. So much so that she has decided to broaden the battlefield.
She wants to get a similar measure enacted in St. Louis County.
"The county is in the process of rewriting its animal ordinances,
so this is the perfect time to approach them," she said, adding
that she's almost ready to contact her county councilman with her
proposal.
"The county's big thrust is on pet overpopulation, so this
should be right up their alley. Leaving dogs tied outside is an
invitation to pet overpopulation if the dogs aren't spayed or neutered,
because of all the unrestrained dogs that roam around neighborhoods,"
she said.
"There's the safety issue, too," she added. "A tethered
dog can't escape if it's attacked by another dog or by a human.
And tethered dogs can become aggressive."
Davie is hoping that others will join her crusade, not just in St.
Louis County but in other municipalities.
"What we did in Creve Coeur has been done in at least 59 other
communities across the country," she said. "It's becoming
kind of a movement, I think."
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