When Salt Lake City Councilman Charlie Luke saw the puppy, he and his family “fell in love.”
They didn’t know anything about owning a dog, Luke said at Tuesday’s City Council meeting, but they brought him home and made him part of their family. They were at a loss when, two days later, their new pet went into a coma with giardia, an upper respiratory infection and pneumonia.
“I called the pet store back and I’m like, ‘Look, you know, we just got this dog. Can you help us?’” he recounted. “And they said, ‘Well, yeah, you can bring him back and we’ll give you a refund.’ I mean, he’s a puppy. My kids had fallen in love with it, I fell in love with it, my wife was totally attached. You know, it’s not a commodity, yet the pet store treated it as such.”
The family was able to nurse the dog back to health with the help of a veterinarian. Nine years later, he cited the story as a reason he plans to support a new city ordinance that would prohibit pet stores from selling animals not obtained from an animal shelter, control agency, humane society or nonprofit rescue organization.
If passed, the restrictions would aim to prevent “puppy mills” from taking hold in the city, reduce pet overpopulation and ensure animals sold in commercial animal establishments are treated “appropriately and humanely,” according to council documents.
“I think moving in this direction is smart because not only is it the right thing to do, but I think there are a lot of folks who don’t know better,” Luke said.
Pet rescue organizations, including the Humane Society of Utah, have advocated for such an ordinance to the Mayor’s Office and City Council.
“The motto ‘adopt, don’t shop’ is more than a moral and ethical issue, it is a public health and community safety issue as well as fiscally responsible move to avoid tax money used to shelter additional animals in local shelters that already face the challenging endeavor to control pet homelessness,” Gene Baierschmidt, the executive director of the Humane Society of Utah, said in a news release.
Before the council’s meeting on Tuesday, Biskupski’s office welcomed rescue animals from the Humane Society in an effort to promote the proposed regulations. Biskupski has adopted two dogs from local rescue organizations this year — Ava and Ember — and said they are two of the “strongest proponents of this ordinance” in her life.
(Trent Nelson | The Salt Lake Tribune) Mayor Jackie Biskupski with Jasper in Salt Lake City on Tuesday Oct. 16, 2018. Several rescue animals visited City Hall from the Humane Society of Utah to promote a proposed ordinance which would prohibit pet stores from selling dogs, cats, and rabbits unless the animals were obtained from an animal shelter, control agency, humane society, or non-profit rescue organization.
“I believe there’s tremendous support for this,” she told The Salt Lake Tribune on Tuesday. “We are a community that has very strong values around our pets, and I see this as in line with those values. I’m very excited to see what happens with the council, but I believe that we’ll see full support from the council on this and be able to move it forward quickly.”
Council Chair Erin Mendenhall and Councilman Chris Wharton also expressed support for the ordinance at the council’s work meeting on Tuesday.
“Unfortunately a lot of times the law treats animals, you know, as chattel or personal property the same as a lamp or a couch, but they’re not the same,” Wharton said. “And when we have laws like this that recognize and protect these members of the family — especially in District 3, where there are more pets in households than there are children — I think we send a message that we recognize that in Salt Lake City.”
The proposal mirrors regulations passed in unincorporated Salt Lake County and in Sandy, which in May became the first Utah city to prohibit the sale of dogs, cats and rabbits in pet stores within city limits.
If adopted, pet store operators would have 90 days to comply with the new rules and any violations of the ordinance would result in a misdemeanor citation. But council staff said Tuesday that all licensed pet stores in Salt Lake City already meet the criteria established in the proposed ordinance.
The council is expected to approve the ordinance at its Nov. 13 meeting.
