Our concerns:
- A discussion on stray hold for lost pets has absolutely nothing to do with legislation concerning Court Case Dogs. They are entirely separate issues.
- There are many dysfunctional portions of Wisconsins’ current lost pet and animal control systems including:
- There is no centralized database being used by shelters in Wisconsin for reporting lost and found pets. (There is a database available, free to use, but stray holding facilities are not making use of it). Stray holding facilities can include large shelters, vet clinics, boarding kennels, police departments, town offices, individual contractors who may hold the dogs in their garage on their property. These facilities do not cross-communicate making it very difficult for an owner to locate their lost pet. Unlike car keys, that usually stay where you lose them – dogs and cats can easily wander and cross jurisdictional borders ending up in a stray holding facility many miles from where they went missing.
- Many Wisconsin stray holding facilities do not post photos of found animals on line, which requires the owner to visit the facility in person to check. This is often time consuming and costly, and many owners do not even know all of the places they should check.
- Some Wisconsin stray holding facilities have outdated microchip scanners or no microchip scanners at all. There is no law in Wisconsin that requires shelters, vet clinics or stray holding facilities to scan for a microchip.
- Many Wisconsin stray holding facilities do not proactively look for owners of missing pets by doing things such as: tracing deadend microchips, posting signs where lost pets were picked up, posting photos online and on Facebook, and searching Craigslist and other lost pet listings.
- Many Wisconsin stray holding facilities do not have extended hours to make it convenient for owners that may work long hours or two jobs to pick up their lost pet in the required time.
- Many Wisconsin stray holding facilities have exhorbitant fees and fines to reclaim a lost pet. Owners often need a few more days to come up with the money to reclaim their pet. It is not uncommon for reclaim fees to be in excess of $200.
- Many Wisconsin stray holding facilities have not embraced the changing demographics of our state and do not offer bilingual assistance to owners who have lost their pets.
- Many Wisconsin stray holding facilities do not take into consideration barriers that prevent people from reclaiming their pets – including lack of transportation, lack of cell phone or internet service and owners with mental or phsyical disabilities.
- Right now, it is too easy for a stray holding facility to proclaim that “the owner wasn’t looking for their pet” and put it down or adopt it out immediately after the stray hold period has lapsed, instead of proactively being part of the solution.
- Wisconsin shelters and rescues are not required to submit intake and euthanasia data to the Department of Agriculture (as is required in Illinois, Michigan and many other states). Government oversight and transparency are needed to make sure that stray animals are not needlessly being put down in our shelters. Tax dollars pay for animal control and stray holding facilities are compensated with those tax dollars to care for lost pets.
We are asking each and everyone of you, our Facebook fans, to contact your state legislators and ask them to NOT co-author or support LRB 1926/1 until the sentence concerning the reduction in stray hold is removed.
Find out who your state legislators are by clicking here and entering your address. Your Wisconsin State Senator and Representative’s contact information will pop up.
Here is a link to the text of the bill: Analysis by the Legislative Reference Bureau
Thank you! Together we can help more lost pets get home safely!