Mayflower Police Chief Steve Young organized a public info session on the city's breed-specific dog ordinance Thursday night, and only two concerned owners of pit bull mix dogs showed up.
The Mayflower City Council passed the ordinance in 2007, banning outright the possession of American pit bull terriers, Staffordshire bull terriers, American bull dogs and mixed-breed dogs with significant pit bull lineage.
Pit bulls already in the city were grandfathered in, though their owners were ordered to have the dogs spayed/neutered and tattooed with a registration number and to present proof of a valid $1 million animal liability insurance policy.
First violation of the ordinance means the dog is seized by Mayflower Animal Control and held for three business days during which the owner can reclaim the dog for a $100 fee and sign an affidavit agreeing to immediately move the dog outside the city limits. After three days the dog would be euthanized.
On the second violation, the owner would be fined and the dog euthanized.
The two that attended the meeting, Greg Doster and Janet Mathews, said the ordinance's singling-out of pit bulls unfairly targets their dogs, both of which were described as gentle to a fault.
Doster found his dog, Butter, a mountain cur/pit bull mix, tied up, abandoned and near-death alongside some railroad tracks.
Doster said Butter is a strictly indoor dog that spends most days "asleep on the bed." His dog is grandfathered in, but he only found out that he needed to register it as a pit bull recently.
"We've spent lots of money getting Butter back in good health," he said, "and now apparently this says we're supposed to get her tattooed and registered and get a $1 million insurance policy?
"You can get it, the insurance, but the insurance agent I talked to at Farmer's said those are outrageously expensive. To get a million dollars, I haven't found anybody that would offer one yet. I'm just not sure if it's feasible to follow the rule to the letter of the law."
Doster added that he appreciated the city's effort to keep its residents safe from animal attack, but could understand how some might interpret the ordinance as being intended to kill the city's pit bulls.
"I realize that they've got a lot of dog fights and that there are a lot of people who raise these dogs to be vicious," he said, "but I have a baby, she's our baby, you know? She wouldn't hurt a flea."
Mathews broadly agreed, adding that getting a $1 million insurance policy for her 10-year-old pit bull/chow mix seems irrational.
"I can't see getting a million-dollar policy because our dogs are old," she said. "They don't have that much longer to live."
Mayor Randy Holland said it's his position to stand behind the council's decisions, but he believes Mayflower could revisit the subject of animal control in the future and possibly alter the ordinance.
"That might be something that we need to take a look at," Holland said. "Really where this one came from is our attorney who basically copied it from North Little Rock. I know (the council is) going to have to look at it; all the cities are probably going to have to look at it sometime and see what the correct reading should be."
Holland expressed some interest in reading Vilonia's animal control ordinance, which was adopted in late 2007. Vilonia's ordinance is neither breed-specific nor species-specific, but rather classifies an animal as vicious or a nuisance after it has demonstrated vicious or nuisance tendencies.
Mayor Ken Belote of Vilonia said it wasn't his place to judge Mayflower ordinances, but expressed a personal reluctance to consider breed-specific animal control ordinances in his city.
"I remember back in the 1950s it was German shepherds," he said. "Everybody was deathly afraid of German shepherds, maybe because that's what the Nazis had, and then Rin-Tin-Tin came out and German shepherds weren't all that bad anymore. Then for awhile there it was Doberman pinschers. Boy, people thought Dobermans were just the baddest, most dangerous thing there was, and then it was Rottweillers there for a while in the '80s and now it's pit bulls that everyone's afraid of.
"I don't think we need to make ordinances based on perceptions that may not be valid."
(Staff writer Joe Lamb can be reached by e-mail at joe.lamb@thecabin.net or by phone at 505-1238. Send us your news at www.thecabin.net/submit)
