11/15/2025
This is not the solution! This is just part of the problem! Our communities are growing, and many of them don’t seem to acknowledge that the animal community is growing with them. Animal control officers need to be put in place and money allotted to them for the proper control of animals in our community. Dallas County is one of the fastest growing counties in America and yet they do nothing for animal control besides rely on us and refused to even throw us a bone in the 17 years we’ve been providing our services. Cities and counties need to take animal welfare seriously and that does not include shooting animals. On the flipside, there has to be buy-in from the community to figure out what to do with all the animals once they have places to go. There has to be a realistic look at what to do besides warehousing animals that can never ever be adopted out. They’re simply isn’t space and resources to house all the dogs that bite. That’s the flipside to the no kill movement. We are warehousing a lot of dogs that can never leave our buildings because of their bite histories. It would simply not be responsible of us to let them out into the community. But that means they just sit in Kennels the rest of their lives. Is that a life? We do our best to make it a good life but the reality is, they are sitting in a stressful kennel the rest of their lives.
WHAT IS THE ANSWER? I don’t know. I’ll be honest. I don’t know. But I do know spaying and neutering is a great first step! Why is this not a requirement for commercial breeders or backyard breeders? Why is it only a requirement for Shelters and rescues, who would do it anyway? This is a great question that I would like the Dept Of Agriculture to answer.
The next step would be enforcing the laws that are already on the books. Why isn’t that happening every single time those laws are broken? That’s a question I would like law-enforcement to answer? Let’s start with Shelly Evans. She has been breeding and neglecting dogs for most of her adult life. Law-enforcement is well aware of her yet she’s only done a few weeks in jail after hundreds of dogs have been bred, abused, neglected and killed by her. Now she is in Walnut, Iowa with more dogs! Yes, Shelly I know where you are. If the sheriff, police and county attorneys don’t take that serious, how can we ever expect any other law-enforcement agency to take the smaller cases seriously. Like Diamond, the dog that was beaten by the boy in Adel on video. Diamond is still in the home being beaten, I’m sure on a regular basis. The police would do nothing about that. We had video evidence yet nothing was done.
I could go on and on about things like this, but it’s just making my blood pressure go off the charts.
It’s way beyond time for Iowa to take animal welfare seriously! I don’t know how many times I can ask people to know who they’re voting for. This starts with the board of supervisors because they are in charge of the sheriffs departments. Demand to know why your tax dollars aren’t being used to take care of the animals in your communities. You need to know what they are doing for animals in your community because it could be your dog or cat that becomes the next victim of this inaction by law enforcement/legislators, disparate treatment by IDALS, and crazy people with guns.
Rant over for now…Amy Heinz
https://who13.com/news/iowa-news/maxwell-community-outraged-after-mayor-makes-comments-about-shooting-dogs/?fbclid=IwZnRzaAOFeKZleHRuA2FlbQIxMQBzcnRjBmFwcF9pZAo2NjI4NTY4Mzc5CGNhbGxzaXRlAjI1AAEesqVJRRpWK7qkKFMNuXT0R1X6QT6y9lFFRxJQr4OD0nytf9D3Fn1nfYfFajI_aem_
MAXWELL, Iowa — At Wednesday’s Maxell City Council meeting, Mayor Dale Higgins made comments suggesting he would shoot stray dogs to deal with the city’s animal problem. “If…
