New Brunswick Has No Dog Tether Law…
We’ve all seen the sad plight of dogs that are always chained every time we drive past their homes.
Why have a pet if it isn’t going to be a member of your family?
But some people have animals for reasons other than having another family member to love.
Some people enslave and abuse their pets for reasons that are utterly unfathomable to animal lovers.
Every week tortured and abused animals are discovered, and the lucky ones are rescued after a lifetime of pain and neglect.
And, even if a dog is not overtly abused by its people, if it spends its life on a chain it has never even had any kind of a life at all.
As people become more aware of these issues many municipalities in the US and Canada are enacting new laws to make sure that dogs are protected from existing….not living, since it is certainly no life at all… on the end of a chain.
New Brunswick, however, has no dog tether law whatsoever. It is actually legal…if morally and ethically despicable…to chain a dog 24 hours a day, 7 days a week in our province.
It’s still very much like the Dark Ages in New Brunswick for our animals.
“Balto” was a dog that was rescued earlier this year by the DunRoamin’ animal advocate and rescue group.
Balto had spent 17 years on a chain, and the only reason he was given up was because he had been crying endlessly. He was crying because he had a urinary tract infection and he had become frozen to the ground from urine that had leaked from his body.
This same household had another younger dog that they gave up at the same time. This dog had also spent the entire year of his life on a short chain, and did not know how to walk, much less run, when he was finally freed.
Balto passed on 4 months after his rescue, but in that 4 months he was finally loved and enjoyed a soft warm bed, water that wasn’t frozen in his dish and all the food he needed for the first time in his life.
And, as a heartrending example of the forgiving nature of dogs he loved his new family unconditionally.
The younger dog now runs and plays and enjoys life as a real dog…not a slave at the end of a short chain.
If you find NB’s lack of dog tether regulations as appalling as we do, get involved and take action. Call and write our politicians. Call and write the SPCA.
Politicians will move to enact new laws and legislation only if there is enough public support and insistence.
So, it is up to us citizens to ask for the changes we need to help abused and neglected animals in New Brunswick.
To report cases of animal abuse call the SPCA Hotline at 1-877-1522.
Stephanie Kelley
