With the passage of the Robeson County Animal Control Ordinance by the Board of Commissioners recently, changes will be coming. Most notably will be significant penalties for animals running at large and eventually a privilege tax for each pet owned.

As a reminder, state and local laws require every animal 4 months or older to wear their rabies vaccination tag at all times.

Staffing has been a critical issue all along. Robeson County has many more needs than money, so not every need can be met totally. This refers to schools, law enforcement, emergency services, social and health agencies, etc.

A recent article noted that Cumberland County trained its 48 employees who work the shelter in new techniques. Cumberland has about 11,000 animals go through their facility. Robeson has a little less than half of that. However, Robeson has one employee and four contract people to handle the shelter. Cumberland has four times the Animal Control officers to do double the work of Robeson with three. This is why the privilege tax on pets is important. Complaints are going to climb, requests for service will increase and the same number of people cannot handle that. Much like human wellness programs are very costly at the beginning because access greatly increases and then costs decline as benefits are realized, that is what should happen with Animal Control.

Most people are familiar with the horrendous vicious animal attacks. The reportable ones usually involve children or fatalities. But there is an endless number of instances that have animals being declared vicious that the public knows nothing about. Recently four dogs killed sheep and chewed the tail off of a cow — this happened several miles away from their residence. Animals are being held that killed a neighbor’s small dog on the neighbor’s property as it was let out to relieve itself. Alpacas were killed in the field by two dogs. Last month an 80-year-woman had her armed grabbed, and the dog was shot and killed. Children are bitten and no one provides information as to how it happened.

And on and on it goes. Until owner’s begin to take responsibility for their pets this is our norm. This is the ultimate outcome for the new rules being implemented.

For those keeping a scorecard, there were 49 dogs in 2019 that severely bit a human, killed a domestic animal or were overly threatening to life that were declared vicious, which obviously does not account for animals killed in protecting life or were not reported, hidden or they just ran off.

To answer the unasked question, more than 40% of these were pit bull/ bull dog or mixes thereof.

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Bill Smith Contributing columnist

Bill Smith is the director of the Robeson County Health Department.

Bill Smith is the director of the Robeson County Health Department.