(A) No owner shall fail to provide his or her animal with sufficient and wholesome food and water, protection from the weather, and reasonable care, including veterinary treatment as may be necessary to prevent suffering. This section shall also apply to animals kept at animal shelters operated by the county, by the Humane Society or by anyone acting on behalf of the county.
(B) No person shall beat, cruelly ill-treat, torment, overload, overwork or otherwise abuse an animal or cause, instigate or permit dogfight, cockfight, bullfight or other combat between animals or between animals and humans.
(C) It shall be unlawful for any owner of any dog, cat or other animal to abandon the same within the county. However, nothing contained herein shall prohibit an animal shelter or any organization contracted with or sanctioned by the county to provide humane animal care from returning any feral cat that has been trapped and spayed or neutered to the location from which the cat had previously been removed.
(D) It shall be unlawful for any person to willfully or maliciously torment, torture, beat, kick, strike, mutilate, injure, disable or kill any dog used by the Sheriff’s Department, whether the dog is on-duty or off-duty or, further, to interfere with or meddle with any such dog while being used by the Department or any officer or member thereof.
(E) It shall be unlawful for any person to throw or deposit any poisonous substance in any of the roads, parks, common yards or other places, whether public or private, within the county so that the same shall be liable to be consumed by an animal; provided that, it shall not be unlawful for a person to expose on his or her own property common rat poison mixed only with the vegetable substances.
(F) Any person who shall become apprised to the death of any animal owned by him or her shall, within 12 hours thereafter, cause the same to be removed from the county, provided that when such animal is killed by any person other than the owner, if know, the owner shall not be compelled to remove it, but it shall be removed by the person so killing.
(G) No person shall keep or permit to be kept any wild animal as a pet except as permitted by the Animal Control Officer. The Animal Control Officer is empowered to issue a temporary permit for the keeping and protection of an infant animal native to the county, which is deemed to be harmless.
(H) It shall be unlawful for a breeder or any other person or entity to keep more than ten unaltered female dogs or cats that are more than 12 months old, for purposes of breeding the dogs or cats for the purpose of selling the offspring.
(I) If a person kills an animal that has bitten someone and requests that the animal be tested for rabies, the person is responsible for the costs of removal of the head of the animal and the transportation of the head.
(Prior Code, § 3-9) (Ord. 12-13-79A, passed 12-13-1979; Ord. 1980-7, passed 11-20-1980; Ord. 1987-16, passed 10-26-1987; Ord. 2021-06, passed 8-30-2021) Penalty, see § 92.99