What is HEART?

HEART stands for Humane and Ethical Animal Rules and Treatment and takes effect as Albuquerque’s animal control law on August 22, 2006.

How is HEART different from the previous Albuquerque ordinance?

It differs in several significant and controversial ways. For instance it mandates that all dogs and cats be spayed and neutered by six months of age. It gives Albuquerque residents until the end of January 2007 to comply.

Wouldn’t spaying and neutering be a good thing?

There are indeed some benefits to spaying and neutering: neutered males won’t get testicular cancer and spayed females won’t get ovarian or uterine cancer or develop pyometra. Also females which are spayed before their first season have a marked decrease for the risk of getting mammary cancer.

On the other hand, studies have also shown that in dogs, those neutered before one year of age had a significantly increased chance of getting bone cancer and spayed females have an increased risk of urinary tract problems. It’s not a black and white issue, and since management (keeping a female separate and secure during her heat cycle and keeping dogs securely fenced to prevent wandering) is an equally useful tool to eliminate unwanted pregnancies and since there are the usual surgical and anesthetic risks to the animals due to the spay and neuter procedures, whether or when to spay or neuter should be left up to the individual owner.

But what about pet overpopulation? Certainly spaying and neutering would reduce that?

Pet overpopulation is a phrase that has become synonymous with the euthanization of pets in our shelters, but I think that’s misleading. While there are some puppies and kittens at the shelter turned in by owners who did not want a litter, but failed to insure that their female could not get pregnant, the overwhelming numbers of animals in the shelter are young adults. These pets had homes at one time, but lost them for a variety of reasons: behavior problems, a move which won’t allow the pet to come along, a new baby in the family and no time for the pet, or even just that the reality of the adult dog was too different from the fantasy that was the puppy. None of these reasons for abandonment will be dealt with by spay or neuter mandates. These are social/educational issues. Cats and kittens offer a special case, too, because many of those captured by animal control are feral populations without any owner to spay or neuter them.

Is there no recourse under HEART but to spay or neuter one’s pet?

HEART does allow an owner the option of not spaying or neutering up to four of his pets if he applies for and receives an Intact Animal Site Permit. The permit cost is annual and requires a fee of $150 per each intact animal, again up to a limit of four. The Mayor may refuse to issue the permit or may suspend or revoke the permit, but in each of those instances he must have cause and you have the right to appeal. Unfortunately, HEART also grants the Mayor the authority to issue a moratorium on the permit, meaning he would just announce that the City will no longer issue Intact Animal Permits. The ordinance doesn’t require “cause” for such a moratorium nor does it establish an appeal process, and it leaves open to question what happens to those who already have the permit when their permit expires at the end of its year. If the owner is unable to get another Intact permit because they are no longer offered, will he then be faced with the choice of spaying/neutering those animals or of moving outside the city limits? If the owner does neither can the city confiscate his animals and forcefully sterilize them?

How else will HEART affect me?

 Dog Parks: Despite claims to the contrary by the bill’s sponsor and HEART proponents, HEART, as it now exists, makes off leash play at city dog parks questionable. A good law is NOT one which depends for its enforcement on the interpretation of a given official (since officials can and do change). A good law clearly states with no ambiguity what’s allowed and what isn’t.

HEART begins by repealing the entire section of the previous ordinance on “Off Leash Dog Areas” and by repealing the previous ordinance’s provision that dogs at the city’s dog parks may be off lead and not considered “at large.” Having repealed all previous language regarding dog parks, HEART then never mentions dog parks or exemptions for dogs at dog parks in its language. Instead under HEART we are told that an “at large” animal is one that “is not contained by a Secure Fence, a Secure Facility, a Secure Enclosure, secured in the back of a pickup truck, inside a vehicle with proper ventilation or restrained on a leash no longer than eight feet held by a responsible person capable of controlling the Animal.”

Now, one might think, and indeed Councilor Mayer has so stated, that since dog parks are fenced that an off-leash animal at the dog park is covered by virtue of being contained by a Secure Fence, and in the next-to-the-last version of the HEART ordinance, that position might have been successfully argued because in the next-to-the-last version of HEART, a Secure Fence was defined as “a visible barrier that prevents any animal from escaping from the property.” HOWEVER, that definition was not enough for the HEART proponents and so they changed the Secure Fence definition in the final version, the version passed by the City Council and made law, to add that a Secure Fence must also “reasonably protect the Animal within the fence from other Animals or people coming into contact with the restrained Animal.”

Since the whole purpose of a dog park is so that dogs and people CAN come in contact with one another, how can a dog park be said to be a Secure Fence? And if a dog park is NOT a Secure Fence and if HEART nowhere makes exception to the “at large” definition for animals in dog parks, then the only clearly legal way for dogs to be in a dog park is to be on a shorter than eight foot leash and held by their owners – which again is contrary to the whole purpose of a dog park.

Councilor Mayer has publicly and repeatedly stated that objections raised about the HEART ordinance are “just plain silly“ but the only “silliness,” and that’s really too light a term, was employed by Ms. Mayer in writing the ordinance the way she did, and in her fundamental lack of understanding that a law is not adjudicated by what one might have intended in the law, but rather on what is actually stated in the law. What Mayer means is that she doubts that anyone will enforce the “at large” definition with dogs at dog parks – not that they can’t, just that they won’t. But it was her responsibility to write the ordinance in such a way that we don’t have to depend on the good will of enforcement officers, but clearly know exactly where we stand within the language of the ordinance itself.