Should the law restrict what animals can be kept as pets?

Obviously everyone on this board is an animal lover and I would hope the type of person who considers getting a new type of animal very carefully to make sure they can meet all its needs and make sure it is happy and healthy. I am not worried about people like this taking on unusual animals (known as exotics in the UK may have different terms used elsewhere) however it seems to me that owners that really do care for animals are actually the least likely to take on "fashionable" species from the start while those who do not do the research and don't care rush in to get their hands on whatever new craze is happening leading to much misery and suffering. This makes me question whether we need stronger legal restrictions on the owning of pets and other animals.

For instance at the moment in the UK meerkats are a big thing. Like everyone else I love the meerkat adverts, and I also love natural meerkats but I appreciate that they do not make good pets. Their needs for social groups of meerkats, to forage and dig, and their personalities are a considerably more bloodthirsty than their cute appearance suggest mean that keeping them is a challenge. Yet they are not restricted as wild or dangerous and anyone with the money can go and buy one (yes just one even though the end result will be a psychotic tormented animal with a shortened life). The same with some types of monkey, birds, other mammals.

Now I am not saying these animals cannot be kept as pets and live happily contented lives interacting with their humans, I am saying that for that to happen the humans have to really care enough to do the research on what the animals need and work hard to provide it. It is bad enough that people can get dogs and cats without any forethought of what being an owner means but as these are already domesticated they have more scope for adapting to poor ownership.

Do you think there should be tighter laws on pet ownership? Should some species be barred from being pets fullstop? What laws would you like to see?

Yes. I believe that the law should state which animals can be kept as pets.I know that some people here keep exotic pets such as tigers and snakes though. These people get special permits from the government. However, I think that before exotic pets are allowed to be kept, the owners should be investigated first. The authority should also make sure that the animals are not endangered.

I can see that having to get a permit to keep an exotic animal would be a good thing, and I certainly think that this should also include all of the constrictor snakes that people keep. It was only a few months ago that two children were killed by an escaped large snake. Any animal that can be considered dangerous if it escapes should be licensed and regulated. Any kind of large cat, lion, tiger, even a bobcat or lynx, should all either not be legal, or be strictly regulated to be sure that they can't escape and maul or kill someone.
Otherwise, I am basically against the government conntrolling all aspects of people's lives, and I do not want to see any unnecessary laws passed for people to have to live with. If someone is abusing an animal, or even neglecting it; there are already laws against that, and those would cover both the usual pets like cats and dogs, as well as the more exotic pets.

I grew up in the rural Upper Peninsula of Michigan and, being sixty-three, I was a child at a time before governments and organizations had stepped in to determine what could or could not be a pet.

We had a fox for a couple of years, raising it from a pup. Now, no one went out and decided to adopt a fox as a pet. As I understand it, the mother had been killed in someone's trap and my father ended up with one of the pups.

Except for the first couple of weeks, when everyone was concentrating on getting it to eat, it was free to leave at any time, and eventually did. As a pup, however, it was quite friendly. It would run out to greet me when I came home from school, leaping into the air and into my arms.

Mom didn't allow any animals in the house, but the fox would sneak in sometimes when someone opened the door, and there would be a chase, as the fox ran from room to room.

We had a couple of dogs, and she got along okay with both of them, although she was a bit too exuberant for the older one. She ignored the chickens and cats. The cats, wisely, avoided her but the chickens didn't seem to consider that she might be a threat.

As she got older, she began wandering at night. As a kid, I'd worry about her, but dad would assure us that it was supposed to be that way. In time, she began staying away for days at a time, then returning to rest up for a couple of days. Eventually, she didn't come back. About a year after we had last seen her around the house, we pulled into the drive way one night to see a fox running from the dog food bowl, so we figured she had probably been visiting from time to time for a free meal. Otherwise, she had gone wild.

A had a couple of raccoons at different times, too. Similarly, they were beautiful pets while they were young, friendly and playful. They were very much like cats, as far as that goes; although, because they could not retract their claws, there would sometimes be some unintended bloodshed. It didn't help that they were talkers, and when they were talking to me, they wanted to look me in the face, and would climb on up even if I was wearing short pants. Like the fox, as they grew into adulthood, they gradually reverted to the wild.

Another time, we raised a skunk. The skunk was not descented, yet never sprayed around the house even when the dogs barked at her. She was not friendly in the way that the fox and raccoons were friendly, but she would tolerate being held or petted, although I always got the feeling that she'd rather not.

She had her first litter of kittens in a hole that she had dug in our backyard, and pretty much remained around the yard, field, and barns, even as an adult, although she quit coming up to anyone.

(10-05-2014, 10:43 PM)Happyflowerlady Wrote: I can see that having to get a permit to keep an exotic animal would be a good thing, and I certainly think that this should also include all of the constrictor snakes that people keep. It was only a few months ago that two children were killed by an escaped large snake. Any animal that can be considered dangerous if it escapes should be licensed and regulated. Any kind of large cat, lion, tiger, even a bobcat or lynx, should all either not be legal, or be strictly regulated to be sure that they can't escape and maul or kill someone.
Otherwise, I am basically against the government conntrolling all aspects of people's lives, and I do not want to see any unnecessary laws passed for people to have to live with. If someone is abusing an animal, or even neglecting it; there are already laws against that, and those would cover both the usual pets like cats and dogs, as well as the more exotic pets.

See the "permits for dangerous animals" is my problem. We do have really strict rules on what can and cannot be kept as pets in the UK and it is based pretty much on the grounds your post is although some of the smaller constrictors are freely for sale.

The problem is that the rules are based entirely on the human focus - it is "can this animal be a threat to people" and if the answer is considered to be no then it can be a pet without any other rules. What about from the other way around "can this animal be harmed by being a pet?" What about looking at what sort of care an animal needs and considering whether that is within the scope of an average pet keeper. Say with meerkats - they need to be kept in a group, have free access to largish outside area for digging, have a specialized diet, and need access to properly heated areas. They are not affectionate "pettable" creatures despite what they look like and are escape artists. Providing proper care for them is beyond the scope of your average pet owner and yet they can be freely bought by anyone without any licensing issues. This is the area I would like to see more rules in - not to protect the humans who are already protected but to protect the poor animals who suffer horribly just because their appearance suggests they would be a suitable pet.

While I can see what you are saying, Puppet; I still disagree with the idea of making more laws that we don't need. PETA already would like us to stop having any pets at all, and believes that they should all be left in the wild. If you find a starving cat, or even an orphaned fawn or a fox, like kfander had; then you would not be allowed to even try and save it.

To give you an example of how that kind of a law would work out, let me tell you about the people who found an orphaned fawn, and they rescued it and took it home.
They knew the fawn needed special attention, so the people took the fawn to an animal rescue that could send it to a facility that cared for and then released orphans like this back into the wild.
Since there was a law against having a wild animal; the police sent a SWAT team to the rescue shelter, traumatized the people working there by threatening them with thier assult rifles, and then the police went into the back, shot and killed the fawn, and carried it out past the rescue workers.
The fact that a wild animal shelter was coming the next day to get the fawn and rehabilitate it for release back into the wild meant nothing to the SWAT team.

I am pretty sure that I posted this story elsewhere on this forum, complete with link to the news article, if you are interested in reading about how laws that were intended to protect the wildlife actually end up getting the helpless animal brutally slaughtered.

(10-08-2014, 11:05 AM)Happyflowerlady Wrote: While I can see what you are saying, Puppet; I still disagree with the idea of making more laws that we don't need. PETA already would like us to stop having any pets at all, and believes that they should all be left in the wild. If you find a starving cat, or even an orphaned fawn or a fox, like kfander had; then you would not be allowed to even try and save it.

To give you an example of how that kind of a law would work out, let me tell you about the people who found an orphaned fawn, and they rescued it and took it home.
They knew the fawn needed special attention, so the people took the fawn to an animal rescue that could send it to a facility that cared for and then released orphans like this back into the wild.
Since there was a law against having a wild animal; the police sent a SWAT team to the rescue shelter, traumatized the people working there by threatening them with thier assult rifles, and then the police went into the back, shot and killed the fawn, and carried it out past the rescue workers.
The fact that a wild animal shelter was coming the next day to get the fawn and rehabilitate it for release back into the wild meant nothing to the SWAT team.

I am pretty sure that I posted this story elsewhere on this forum, complete with link to the news article, if you are interested in reading about how laws that were intended to protect the wildlife actually end up getting the helpless animal brutally slaughtered.

I don't think the fact that a law has been badly written allowing for it to be incorrectly applied with stupidity like you describe should be taken as a reason for there to be no law at all.

I would suggest roughly grouping animals in a country into 3 groups - familiar and frequently kept as pets - no restrictions on keeping, with the possibility of requiring minimal licensing to ensure that needs are understood and met (I am fed up of front page news about children being killed by dogs whose owners did not have a clue). Native normally found in the wild - recognized best practise care paths with public expected to follow within reasonable time. (so the fact that wild animal shelter contacted means no legal issue in your example - in real world would allow shelters to make assessment that animals is OK to remain in hands of public if that was the case) Finally and the group I am concerned with is the non native species not normally kept as pets for whom licensing should be required regardless of whether or not they are dangerous to humans. So animals like meerkats in the UK and US, prairie dogs in the UK, monkeys etc.

I am not saying they should not be allowed as pets I am saying that because such animals need more involved care as pets a person wanting one as a pet should be legally required to demonstrate that they are able to provide the more involved care.

Puppet, I totally agree with you that any kind of pet should be properly cared for. If someone does not know about the pet that they are adopting; then they should not be having that pet, regardless of whether it is a puppy or a monkey. The pet should have a home where people are knowlegable of the pet and how to care for it.
This is certainly no always the case. For example, the news reported a story from Japan (if I remember right, anyway), and these people bought what they beieved to be a Poodle, and very expensive Poodle at that.
When the got their "Poodle Pet" home, they had several problems. the main one was the poodle would not even touch any kind of dog food. It made a lot of noise when it walked across the floor, and sometimes slipped and fell when it tried to scamper across the floor.
It was not responsive at all to housetraiing.
They took the Poodle into a vetrinarian to get the noisy toenails trimmed, and find out what to do about the not-eating problem.
When the vet looked at their pet, he immediately saw the problem. the Poodle Pet was actually a lamb that had been sheared to look like a Poodle. The paws were not paws, the claws were hooves.
All the people who fell for these fake Poodles could not even tell that they did not actually have a dog !

http://www.democraticunderground.com/dis...05x6455719

I love animals and I love the fact that people are willing to have them in their homes. I think there should be guidelines on what types of pets can be kept in residential areas. If there isn't such guidelines there would be more problems than we could ever possibly handle.

Like most things, guidelines need to be in place to protect all.

Danyel

The thing that concerns me about this, is that we can't make laws to control the movements and doings of every person, and often the laws make things worse, rather than helping. People will find ways around the law if it exists; or just do something illegally. The only people it does affect are the ones who are already obeying the laws.
For instance; many places have restrictions about how many dogs you are allowed to have. Here, it is 3 dogs.
If someone is a good dog owner and has 4 dogs, is that terrible ?

On the other hand; the people who are raising pitbulls for fighting are still doing that, just doing it somewhere that is not as obvious as having them running around in their front yard.
So, all this law does is stop someone who might adopt and animal from the dog pound and save its life, and doesn't stop the lawbreakers from abusing their animals at all.

I think it would considerably limit the ownership of non native non regular pets though - it is a lot harder to hide something exotic. I mean at the moment in the UK with no regulations concerning ownership of say meerkats plenty of legal if thoughtless businesses will provide people with meerkats and will source them from any old place offering them. If licensing was bought in a lot of places would stop offering them and places providing them would have to be of a much higher standard.

I know it will not stop the suffering completely but it will reduce it considerably. There is a much lower percentage of badly kept venomous snakes than there are of say rat snakes in the UK because you need a licence for a venomous snake which means you have to know what you are doing. Anyone can buy a rat snake which means lots of people don't know what they are doing. I want to combat suffering caused by ignorance - I don't expect it to effect that caused by deliberately malice but just because we cant stop malice does that mean we should ignore ignorance?

Puppet, i can see the need for some kind of a license for exotic pets, especially ones that were meant to be wild creatures, and not ones that have bonded with people over the years, like dogs and cats have done.
I remember when I was a little girl; I wanted a pet monkey is the worst way. In those days, they advertised little Squirrel Monkeys on the back cover of comic books, and they only cost $19.95 for a monkey. Of course, my mother was not just about to let me have a pet monkey; so I never got one, and have no idea where those monkeys came from, how much the shipping was, or if they even arrived alive when you ordered one. Looking at it as an adult; I don't see how they could have possibly shipped a live monkey, at least not safely for the monkey.
Now, there are laws here about owning a monkey and they cost thousands of dollars, not $19.95.
Just going out and capturing wild animals and selling them as pets is not the right thing to do, and especially when people know nothing about the animal that they are buying, like the meerkats you are talking about.

Yes, there are to many people who make unwise choices and get exotic pets that can be a danger to them of others and a danger to the environment if they escape. I do not think such pets should be allowed. Large snakes for example in my opinion should not be legal to have as pets. There have been some really horrible stories of those kind.

I think it is important to define what a "pet" actually is. To some people, a pet can be any creature that they have in captivity, whether that creature is happy to be there or not.
Others of us, including me, believe that a pet is an animal that we keep, care for, and the animal enjoys our company as much as we enjoy their company.
Looking at the first definition, a person can keep a spider, snake, fish, or just about any kind of living creature and call it a pet.
But, that does not truly make it a pet. If a true pet is one that enjoys living along with human beings, then we will be eliminating many of the animals, reptiles, and bugs, that we have discussed in this topic, as well as most of the wild creatures who are also sometimes kept as a pet.
Truthfully, those creatures might more aptly called a hobby, or even a curiousity, rather than a pet, which they definitely are not.

This legal discussion overviews the typical elements in municipal ordinances that restrict the number of pets a person can own. It analyzes the relevant cases and provides examples ordinances that limit the number of dogs a person can own. Both nuisance regulations and zoning regulations are discussed, as well as the broad police powers municipalities enjoy.