(a) No owner shall fail to provide his or her animal with sufficient good and wholesome food and water, proper shelter and protection from the weather, veterinary care when needed to prevent suffering, and humane care and treatment.
(b) No person shall beat, cruelly ill treat, torment, overload, overwork or otherwise abuse an animal or cause, instigate or permit any dogfight, cockfight, bullfight or other combat between animals or between animals and humans.
(c) No owner of an animal shall abandon such animal.
(d) No person shall crop a dog's ears, except when a licensed veterinarian issues a signed certificate that the operation is necessary for the dog's health and comfort and in no event shall any person except a licensed veterinarian perform such an operation.
(e) No person shall dye or otherwise color any rabbit or baby poultry, including, but not limited to, chicks and ducklings. No person shall sell, offer for sale, expose for sale, raffle or give away any rabbit or baby poultry which has been dyed or otherwise colored. Chickens or ducklings younger than eight weeks of age may not be sold in quantities of less than twenty-five to a single purchaser.
(f) No person shall give away any live animal, reptile or bird as a prize for, or as an inducement to enter, any contest, game or other competition, or as an inducement to enter a place of amusement, or offer such vertebrate as an incentive to enter into any business agreement if the offer is for the purpose of attracting trade.
(g) Any person who, as the operator of a motor vehicle, strikes a domestic animal, shall stop at once and render such assistance as may be possible and shall immediately report such injury or death to the animal's owner. In the event the owner cannot be ascertained and located, such operator shall at once report the accident to the appropriate law enforcement agency or to the local humane society.
(h) No person shall expose any known poisonous substance, whether mixed with food or not, so that the same is liable to be eaten by an animal. However, it shall not be unlawful for a person to expose on his or her own property common rat poison mixed only with vegetable substances.
(Ord. 79-33. Passed 6-26-79.)
(i) No person shall tether or bind an animal with an improperly fitting collar or harness that injures or harms the animal, or in any way causes the strangulation or entanglement of the animal in fences, trees, or other surrounding obstacles.
(j) No person who confines or who is the custodian or caretaker of a companion animal shall own, keep or harbor and prohibit by fixed chain or tether a companion animal, under the following conditions:
(1) For more than ten total hours within any 24-hour period;
(2) During the hours between sunset and sunrise;
(3) Restrict the companion animal from free movement and free from entanglement;
(4) Restrain the companion animal with a device at a length of less than 12 feet;
(5) Prohibit a companion animal that is tethered from access to shelter from heat, cold, wind, rain, snow, or excessive direct sunlight, if it can reasonably be expected that the companion animal would become sick or suffer in any other way as a result of or due to the deprivation, confinement, or impoundment in any of those specified manners.
(k) Whoever violates or fails to comply with any of the provisions of this section is guilty of a misdemeanor of the third degree.
(Ord. 06-9. Passed 7-25-06.)