Are We All Cruel to Animals? HB158

Virginia House Bill #158 actually contains only one addition to an existing law, specifically about "devocalizing" or "debarking" pets. However, it's interesting to note that, although the law doesn't seem to be interpreted this way, it leaves room to convict entire neighborhoods of cruelty to animals as a misdemeanor. Read the full text here:

http://lis.virginia.gov/cgi-bin/legp604.exe?121+ful+HB158

This needs to change. Consider a strictly hypothetical situation (all the facts have been falsified to protect the guilty). You and I live in the same neighborhood. Our neighbors, the Does, have a dog, Spot, who likes to chase cars. Spot is usually kept behind a three-foot fence in the back yard, but he can jump five feet if he really wants to, and every few weeks he gets out. Inevitably one day a stranger backs into Spot. We hear Spot howl, then break into a cough; we see a patch of blood on the ground beside the road; if we happen to pass close by, we might actually see that the contour of Spot's side has changed. It's likely that Spot has a broken rib. However, he's not our dog, so we don't take him to the vet; we wait for the Does to do it. As it happens everyone in the Doe family is out of work, so they don't take Spot to the vet. John Doe asks you if you could lend him a hundred dollars. You can't. Jane Doe asks me if I could lend her a hundred dollars. I can't. We don't ask any nosy questions about Spot or about why this family suddenly needs a hundred dollars. A week later Spot dies. And the way the law's written, we're all equally guilty of depriving Spot of emergency veterinary care...though at least nobody can say we did it "maliciously." The applicable paragraph specifies "any animal, whether belonging to himself or another"!

Clearly, if anyone decided to get vigilant about enforcing this law as written, the only way to protect whole neighborhoods from charges of "cruelty to animals" would be to criminalize anyone's living with any kind of animal companion. And I hate to say it, but the current president of the Humane Society, Wayne Pacelle, has been quoted as stating that as a goal.

The proposed amendments in HB158 are, in my opinion, excellent and long overdue. (Thanks, Delegate Hope.) However, the existing law still needs some editing.