Kennewick Sheriff Spares the Dog, Bills the Owner
A new enforcement order ends the practice of killing unmuzzled dogs found at large, putting fines and jail time on the people who let them run.
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Sheriff Duffy has issued instructions to his deputies to rigidly enforce the dog muzzling quarantine. Heretofore enforcement has been attempted by killing unmuzzled dogs found running at large. In the future, however, instead of inflicting the extreme penalty on the dog, the owner is to be made to answer for the violation. The quarantine law provides for a fine or imprisonment for any owner who violates it, and it is by invoking this provision of the law that the sheriff hopes to compel a strict observance of the state's quarantine law.
“Instead of inflicting the extreme penalty on the dog, the owner is to be made to answer for the violation.”
Animal control has moved even further from summary killing, but the same tension remains: do you punish the animal or the person responsible? Sheriff Duffy's order was an early local attempt to shift rabies enforcement from the dog to the owner, a argument that still shapes modern animal-control policy.
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