Hundreds of owners given deadline by city
The City of Montreal has sent form letters to as many as 500 local pitbull owners telling them that because their applications to keep their dogs are incomplete, they have four weeks to find their dogs new homes in towns where the breed isn’t outlawed or surrender the dogs to animal shelters.
It warns legal action will be undertaken if they fail to do so.
The form letter, dated Aug. 21, informs recipients that while they had respected the March 31 deadline to apply for permits to keep their dogs and had been given until June 1 to provide documentation to support their requests, their files remained incomplete.
That letter was received on Wednesday by Nathaniel Perl, who has been working to make sure his two-year-old dog, Lily, isn’t caught up in Montreal’s pit bull ban.
“When the ban was announced, I wasn’t sure if she was a pit bull or not. They gave me an extension and said they’d get back to me with an inspector — which they didn’t,” Perl said Thursday. “Finally, I decided to register her as a pit bull just to be safe.”
Perl reckons he has spent up to $500 to follow the city’s criteria, including providing proof he has no criminal record.
“I sent all the (necessary) documents along with the police check on May 30,” he said. “I didn’t get an answer, so I called the city. They told me they’d received so many emails there was a delay, but they’d send me my tag (for his dog).
“And then I get this letter ... quite threatening, actually. This is really crazy.”
Perl said he intended to head to city hall Thursday afternoon to try to sort out the problem and save his dog.
Others hearing of the ban on social media were equally upset. “It’s our child. It’s very upsetting,” tweeted Sophia Banks.
Local animal shelters were taken aback by the news, arguing that four weeks was far too short a time for any owner to fulfil the conditions imposed by the city and warning that the letters would probably lead to some pit bulls simply being abandoned by owners who tried to respect Montreal’s bylaw.