There is a push from the new Animal Control Officer to change the ordinances of how they will enforce animal laws in the county. Some of these are causing a ripple effect with the animal advocate community, and their plan is to voice their opinions at the next few commissioners meetings.
We attended the meeting on 4-14-25. Commissioner Morris called the attending animals rights people “Animal Zealots” which had a ripple effect through the crowd with one person getting ejected. Here’s that video.
Feel free to share that video far and wide.
Now, I have something to say here. I, personally, know this particular crowd type. I dealt with them for ~20 years as the webmaster for USABreeders, a well known Breeder page that is now on Facebook. It will also be created at www.usabreeder.com as time permits.
These are the exact same type of people, different generation. I’m not for, or against them, I just know the passion they have. Ask me some time about what some of these do at dog auctions in Missouri.
They attacked Tommy, the current Animal Shelter Director, pretty hard. Why? Well, if I look back over the years, the reason is most likely that they want one of their people to replace him. This would be a massive mistake, one I hope the Commissioners resist. The result will be, they will end up hating whoever would replace him too, their goal appears to be to make all dogs indoor dogs. BUT, they will NEVER be satisfied with ANYONE other than THEIR pick to be the Director, and that opinion will change with the wind.
Any herding or security type dog (we’ve had Border Collies) will slowly go insane if confined to the indoors of a home. They were bred to farm. Herd animals. that’s what they are MEANT to do.
We’ve also had Yorkies, who also are a herding type animal, they hunt small pests. Again, a PERMENANT indoor existence is not what these dogs were bred to do.
Our recommendation, is to research the breed of dog you want, and whatever is their nature, nurture it. Let them live the life they were bred to do. Look at the AKC website for breeds, and fence in your yard and let them enjoy it, OR if you live on a farm like we do, let the dog do it’s bred job.
What also needs attention, is the new animal shelter. A few years ago, when this project first was conceived, I had the chance to inspect the blueprints and provide some opinions on how the shelter needed to be equipped and built. I’ve seen HUNDREDS of commercial kennels in the midwest as part of a previous job I had. I’m available for any meeting to discuss the best way to build this new kennel.
BUT. The budget for this new kennel (it’s a kennel, no matter what everyone wants to call it) has a price tag now approaching $2Million. When this first started, the budget was far less than that. What changed? These are OUR funds being used to build this thing, and I can tell you, I saw kennels that housed HUNDREDS of animals that were far less than $1Million to build.
I sense someone is earning some $$$ off the top.