Pet Limits: Is Keeping Your Neighborhood “Nice” Costing Lives?

Many of us, no doubt, have encountered local ordinances and regulations limiting the number of pets that can be maintained in an individual home. Even in counties and cities that have no such regulations homeowners associations maintain newly built subdivisions and limit the number of pets allowed. Those of us moving into such new subdivisions may even initially and superficially agree with the idea. However, are those regulations really keeping our neighborhoods safe, clean, and nuisance free, or are they unnecessarily reducing the number of cats and dogs that can be adopted or fostered from local shelters, often leading to unnecessary euthanasia?

A simple Google search using the phrase "pet limitlaws" shows that others have written more extensively and in greater detail than you will find here. My intention is only to raise questions. 

Pet limits often direct themselves at decreasing unwanted behaviors such as animal hoarding, excessive barking, animal attacks, inappropriate disposal of animal waste, illegal businesses in the form of animal breeding enterprises, and such like. If you look more closely, though, there is a common thread: every single one of these goals roots itself in the idea that animal owners are irresponsible! Another common theme is the fear of what might happen rather than any statistical prediction of what will happen. 

Responsible pet owners usually know their limitations when it comes effectively controlling and caring for their animals. Some owners are able to control and care for five or six animals while others may only be able to manage one or two. Additionally, many of the unwanted behaviors described above can be effectively controlled using nuisance laws rather than pet limits. In the case of animal hoarding, it is unlikely that any law would prevent this because it is often the manifestation of an underlying psychiatric disorder. 

In some states, courts have struck down pet limit laws asunconstitutionally restricting an individual's right to own property. Of course, that brings up the argument of whether pets are property or not, but that is an argument for another time. In the case of homeowners association agreements it is less clear whether there is constitutional argument against these restrictions because of the voluntary nature of the agreement.  

What cannot be argued against it is that many law-abiding homeowners accept these laws or agreements rather than challenge them for fear of bringing the litigious wrath of some regulatory body down upon themselves. Thus, many responsible pet owners sit and gaze longingly at the photographs of all the cats and dogs currently housed in shelters, often aware that those cats and dogs may be scheduled to die, knowing that they could rescue one or two more but feeling helpless to do so! 

I have no problem with the prosecution of nuisance owners for failing to appropriately control their animals: there are some people who should just not own animals. And legal remedies already exist for such irresponsibility. What I do have a problem with is unnecessarily restricting the potential for animals to find loving homes when shelters are crammed to capacity! When 4-5 million adoptable animals are killed each year imagine the difference if every animal lover capable of taking in one more animal was allowed to do so!