Could happen anywhere

You might recall the recent story of the puppy named Caitlyn whose snout was grotesquely taped shut by its owner. The dog from South Carolina was in critical condition for a long time and could have lost part of its tongue.

Luckily, Caitlyn’s story has a happy ending, but that’s not the case for all animals.

If you think animal abuse can’t happen here, you’d be wrong. Animal abuse is prevalent, even in Clarke County.

Joy Durham, manager of Clarke County Animal Shelter, said there’s a lot of animal torture and cruelty in the state of Iowa, and laws are too vague to adequately provide help.

“There’s not a lot of recourse for the police because the laws say it needs to have food, water and shelter,” Durham said. “It doesn’t say what the shelter needs to look like. It doesn’t say what’s adequate shelter. It doesn’t say when it needs to be fed, when the water needs to be refreshed. It can be tied out 24 hours a day, seven days a week.”

She said none of the offenses are felonies because they are “ticketable” misdemeanors.

Durham said, with an animal torture charge, one of the punishments is the offender doing community service at an animal shelter.

“You wouldn’t want to take a kid that’s been abused, and then have a child abuser go and volunteer at the orphanage,” she said.

Hands are tied

According to Durham, many times the police and local animal officials’ hands are tied because there’s not a rule or law for action against a perpetrator and help for an animal.

Osceola Police Chief Marty Duffus said the biggest issue for the department is the definitions of the laws. He said people will often call law enforcement and give complaints of abuse. However, when officials will go out and look at the situation, they “maybe don’t agree.”

“So, therefore, it looks like we didn’t do anything,” Duffus said. “When really, we’re just acting on how the code has interpreted over many years, and exactly what it is the interpretations have said. The problem is they don’t print the interpretations, they just print the law.”

Duffus said he would like to see more clarity in the definitions in the law.

“People will see an animal that may not have food in its bowl,” he said. “Well, we don’t know when the last time the dog ate. … Neither does the person, more than likely.”

Once a police officer arrives and the dog has food in the bowl, their purpose there is ineffective at that point.

“We may not even disagree that we think the animal is being abused, we just know that it won’t stand,” Duffus said. “If we think it’s going to stand, then we can either cite them or remove the animal, and we’ve done that.”

Changing laws

According to Durham, animal abuse laws are written with “archaic” rules that need to be changed.

One way to do that is to write to local politicians and make the concerns known.

She recommended contacting Sen. Amy Sinclair, R-Allerton, and Rep. Joel Fry, R-Osceola, to support animal care and safety when it comes to voting on laws.

Durham cited instances with dogs with maggots in them, dogs without any water and animals brought in that have never been to a veterinarian.

“They can’t say, ‘Hey, I need a drink or need to have a window cracked. I need to get out,’” Durham said. “A lot of it is just letting the people down here know that this stuff happens. That it needs to change. Another thing is giving the police the tools to make it happen, and be able to, when something comes up in front of the judge, have something other than, oh well, you have a $50 fine.”

Education

Clarke County Animal Shelter tries to be proactive with the problem and educating people on effective animal and pet care.

One local instance was a dog didn’t have an outdoor dog house, and since the shelter was able to provide the adequate tools and education, the problem has been fixed.

Then, there’s the Animal Rescue League (ARL), which works with counties that don’t have animal control. They have been to Clarke County before to work with both Durham and Duffus.

Durham also said having a local animal control official would be beneficial.

“The other thing is people have got to stop living in the theory, ‘It doesn’t happen here.’ I hear that I don’t know how many times lately,” she said.