07-17-2017, 10:29 PM
(This post was last modified: 07-17-2017, 10:32 PM by Toffee's Lover.)
Definitely agree that if people have to pay fines for abandoning their pets it's likely just going to lead to more people abandoning them outside the shelter - or worse, on the streets. There are lots of reasons to have to give up an animal, with varying levels of selfishness - imagine somebody has lost their job and is completely unable to provide adequate food, etc. for an animal, or is injured and can't give them any quality of life/exercise... in that case a fine is just a barrier to giving the animal a better life than they can provide.
If someone has morals, they probably would walk right in, and pay the fine. But people who genuinely don't give a ship about an animal will take the convenience and lesser expense of abandoning them outside. At least if there's no fee somebody who doesn't care about the animal's welfare might bother to drop the animal at a shelter rather than, say, just leaving their gate open and hoping their dog wanders off.
I also don't think the fine would in any way be a deterrent to giving up an animal. Nobody is going to think 'I can't take care of/don't want this animal... but since it's $100 to give them up, I'll keep them'... and if they did, are those really the kinds of people who should own animals? People who keep them solely because they don't want to pay a fine?
I think a better choice would be more rigorous requirements for who can own or adopt animals - but since there are already loads of animals waiting for homes in shelters, that might be hard or impractical to implement.
