It's now illegal to sell animals on the roadside after a vote by Harris County commissioners on Tuesday, KPRC Local 2 reported.
For Eunice Foltin, it's an ordinance for which she has been waiting and campaigning.
She has pictures of pit bull puppies being sold on the side of the road two weeks ago for $1,000 each. She said it's a lucrative business that is only about money and not finding a good home.
"You don't go to the side of the road and sell and give away animals if you're not a puppy mill. These are puppy mills. A true, true breeder -- you go to their kennels and see how their animals are kept," Foltin said.
She brought her concerns to commissioner's court and they agreed.
Judge Ed Emmett credited Foltin with helping get the job done.
"The treatment of those animals is just deplorable. We, the county, lobbied the legislature to give us the right to ban the sales," Emmett said.
Roadside sales are one of my pet peeves (no pun intended...seriously.) People who sell animals out of the trunk of their car or the bed of their pickup usually have "bred" the animals themselves, or are stuck with a litter of kittens or puppies after negligently failing to spay or neuter their pets. There's no accounting for health or behavior of the animals being sold, and the people who'll actually buy an animal out of someone's car are not usually the kind to care. There's nothing in this ordinance to stop people from giving away animals (another common sight) but at the very least it makes it that much harder for amateur breeders to make a buck off of their animals. I've long believed that the breeding and selling of animals in this country should be strictly regulated (despite libertarian whining on the subject) and this is a step in the right direction.
2 comments:
Let us hope more counties do the same.
We agree with the new laws and have always thought that the selling of cats and dogs in this manner is deplorable.
But not all people giving away puppies or kittens are negligent. We trap and then spay or neuter cats and then trap the kittens. After we take them to the vet we have little choice but to sit by the side of the road and try to give them away, free of course. Most shelters are full and the others will kill them and we can't and won't be a part of that.
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