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In Kalamazoo, Michigan a woman was arrested because she didn’t renew the license for her dog before it expired. Although it’s likely the charges will be dismissed, Becky Rehr will be facing a possibility of 90 days in jail and $100 fine today (July 7th), when she appears in court for the misdemeanor crime of being too busy to pay a small tax on time.

Rehr, who had no previous record except a single traffic ticket, had stopped by the Kalamazoo County Sheriff’s office on June 23rd to show them a receipt proving she had in fact paid for the dog license, including a late fee, after having received a notice that a warrant had been issued for failure to renew the license by its due date. However, instead of it being a quick trip to clear things up, she instead ended up being arrested, booked, and thrown into a holding cell:

While her 14-year-old daughter waited in the car, Rehr followed the clerk out of the reception area. To her horror, she found that she was not being led to an office, but to the booking area of the county jail, where she was fingerprinted, had a mug shot taken and was put in a holding area with jail inmates. “They frisked me and put me in this intake cell with all these inmates in orange jumpsuits,” Rehr said. “I was pretty nervous.” It took three hours before she was released on $100 bond, allowing her to return to her daughter, still waiting in the car.

Apparently, Michigan takes unlicensed dogs very seriously. Even though they are “not looking to punish people,” according to Steve Lawrence, the director of Kalamazoo County Animal Control, they issue four to five warrants a month, on the average, for the owners of dogs whose licenses have expired.

Of course, you can’t let scofflaws (and their little dogs, too) roam the streets, even if they’ve already payed the original fee, plus a late charge, and the reason that they were late in renewing the license was because they work long hours as a surgical nurse and are also taking care of two teenage children by their self, while the father is away on business.

That sort of lawlessness would probably result in some sort of scary anarchy, where everyone was running around with dogs whose names weren’t readily identifiable by looking at their collar.

