What possible use to anyone are animal control hearings?
Other than the fact that you might pay a fine (or worse, lose your pet) if you don’t attend when commanded to, animal control hearings are the crucibles in which animal ownership is fired and tested. Certainly, they are no place for those with fainthearted dispositions toward duty or drama. In those small rooms, neighbors bristle at accusations of neglect, parents implore the support of recalcitrant children, and friends beseech unblinking associates to lie or worse. The legal compulsion and moral compulsion to do right by others, to others, to one’s own pet, and to one’s own community, collide with each citation. A hearing is an arena in which interpreting the phrase “to cause annoyance” does exactly that. Owners, who become alarmed, will bark. Ordinances, with teeth, can bite. A bracing bit of municipal animal control code, sensibly applied, can do more to get a citizen off the rhetorical sidewalk and into the judicial street than all the town hall meetings in the world combined. In
