Dogs shouldn’t have to pay the price for the sins of their owners
Animal lovers are, rightly so, up in arms over an Oregon appeals court decision that will require a couple to have their Tibetan mastiffs’ vocal cords severed.
The court upheld a 2015 decision by an Oregon judge, who found that the couple, Karen Szewc and John Updegraff, had failed to take other action to silence their dogs’ incessant barking and ordered the dogs debarked, a surgery that cuts their vocal cords.
Here’s the backstory. The Szewc-Updegraffs, who live in Rogue River, Oregon, began breeding the large, fluffy mastiffs in 2002. Shortly after that, their neighbors, Debra and Dale Krein, complained that the dogs barked constantly, especially when their owners were away.
In 2004 and again in 2005, Szewc was cited for violating Jackson County’s public nuisance code, charging that she allowed two of her dogs to “bark frequently and at length.” Szewc argued that she was living on a farm, which enjoys special exemptions, and that the dogs were protecting sheep and goats on the property.
A county court wasn’t convinced and ordered her to pay a $400 fine and to have the dogs debarked. It’s unclear whether Szewc carried through with the debarking, but after 10 years of listening to the cacophony, the Kreins filed a civil suit in 2012 against Szewc and Updegraff, who now have six mastiffs on the 3.4-acre property.
A jury awarded the Kreins $238,000 in damages, and Judge Timothy Gerking ordered the couple to debark the dogs. Last week, an appeals court upheld the rulings.
Local and national animal groups are lining up behind the dogs. A petition on Change.org appealing to the courts to reverse the order, has drawn more than 49,000 signatures.
You’ll get no argument from me that listening to dogs barking for hours, day and night, makes for an extremely unpleasant living situation, but this is not a dog problem; it’s a human one.
The dogs in this case are the victims of both sides, but I put most of the blame on their owners, who should have taken steps long before now to minimize the barking.
Training is the best de- terrent against barking, and dogs smart enough to herd and protect sheep also are smart enough to be taught to bark only when the need arises.
While debarking doesn’t silence the dogs — it only mutes their voices — the procedure can be risky, painful and in some instances, can make the barking louder. Even if it was painless and without danger, it would still be wrong. Being annoyed doesn’t justify mutilating an animal.
Debarking surgery is banned in the United Kingdom and 25 countries that signed the European Convention for the Protection of Pet Animals, but it remains legal in most of the United States.
California, usually a leader in the protection of animals, failed to deliver in 2000 when a bill to ban debarking was introduced. The only law speaking to debarking makes it illegal for a landlord to require a tenant to debark dogs or declaw cats as a condition of tenancy.
It’s time for California and other states to step up and in a clear voice enact a law that will allow dogs to keep theirs.